Publishing a static blog with Zeit Now

I decided to use my Tinderbox-generated static blog as a real world test of https://zeit.co.

It was pretty simple. I started out with a folder full of HTML files generated by Tinderbox. Then…

1. Install Zeit Desktop
2. Run now from within the html folder
3. Done. The site is now available via an auto-generated URL like notes-xxxyyyzzz.zeit.sh

I’d of course rather use a nicer, more permanent URL so I did this…

1. Create a CNAME DNS record for notes.baty.net pointing at alias.zeit.co
2. Run now alias notes-xxxyyyzzz.zeit.sh notes.baty.net
3. Add the verification TXT DNS record

This made notes-xxxyyyzzz.zeit.sh available at notes.baty.net. Each time I deploy, the instance is available at a new, auto-generated URL. The nice thing about that is each deployment creates a new, permanent version of the site. It also means that the alias must be updated each time. To do that, I created a now.json file that looks like this…

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{
  "name": "notes",
  "alias": "notes.baty.net"
}

So to deploy any new changes, I export the Tinderbox document and type…

now && now alias

I’ve made this into a Tinderbox “Stamp” so that all I have to do is select “Publish” from the Stamps menu and it runs the commands for me.

This means the site is available, with automatically-configured SSL, at https://notes.baty.net/. Pretty cool.