Using org-mode with Jekyll

July 8, 2016 | ruby | programming |

Since my journey into Google Docs’s Hell I have been getting more reacquainted with org-mode for other purposes as well. Traditionally, I have been writing this blog using Markdown and publishing it with Jekyll. I love Markdown, and while it is fine for most cases, but what better way to gain more experience with org-mode than to blog with it! The best tutorial that I have found so far is this one from the org mode web site: Using org to Blog with Jekyll. One “gotcha” that I have ran into so far, is everything breaking if I include a table of contents (which happens by default when you export to HTML). The simplest solution for this is to add the following to the top of your org flavored file.

#+OPTIONS: toc:nil

This allows the front-matter to be exported properly. I am also choosing not to include section numbering for my posts. So the complete front-matter for this post looks like this:

#+OPTIONS: toc:nil num:nil
#+BEGIN_HTML
---
layout: post
title: "Using org-mode with Jekyll"
permalink: /:title/
tags: hacking
---
#+END_HTML

Configuration

My jekyll blog project looks like this:

;; File ~/.emacs.d/customizations/setup-org.el
;; ...

;;;;
;; Projects
;;;;

;; levlaz.org Blog
(setq org-publish-project-alist
      '(("levlaz"
         ;; Path to org files.
         :base-directory "~/git/levlaz.org/_org"
         :base-extension "org"

         ;; Path to Jekyll Posts
         :publishing-directory "~/git/levlaz.org/_posts/2016/"
         :recursive t
         :publishing-function org-html-publish-to-html
         :headline-levels 4
         :html-extension "html"
         :body-only t
         )))

Workflow

My current workflow looks something like this:

Add a new file to git/levlaz.org/_org/$DATE-$TITLE.org
Add the front matter shown above
Blog my heart out
Check my spelling with ispell
Publish the org file with C-c C-e P p , this moves the file from git/levlaz.org/_org/ to /git/levlaz.org/_posts/2016/$DATE-$TITLE.html
Build and Deploy my site with my Rakefile: rake deploy.

Conclusion

There is definitely some room for improvement here such as macros for dumping in the front-matter, easier deployment, and more automation. I plan on seeing what I can do to make this process a bit smoother for me and update this post when I do.

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

A Year Of Vibes from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
Pluralistic: A perfect distillation of the social uselessness of finance (18 Dec 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Moving from WordPress to Substack from charity.wtf
Grow, Like a Tree Not a Cancer from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Pluralistic: All the books I reviewed in 2025 (02 Dec 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
DEP-18: A proposal for Git-based collaboration in Debian from Optimized by Otto
[RIDGELINE] No Phones in The Ten-don Shop from Craig Mod — Writer + Photographer
Open design: the opportunity design students didn’t know they were missing from Ubuntu blog

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Happy Holidays 2025

It wasn't the best of times or the worst of times. Well, it might be the worst of times.

via ODonnellWeb December 25, 2025

Clear your calendar, pour a favorite beverage, and immerse yourself into the year in music with reports from Simon Collison and Jon Hicks. Fantastic every year.

via Colin Devroe December 24, 2025

On Friday Deploys: Sometimes that Puppy Needs Murdering

It's the most wonderful time of the year: the pie, the eggnog, the eternal debates over whether deploy freezes cause more harm than good. 🤶🌲

via charity.wtf December 24, 2025

Generated by openring