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Guides

These guides encompass most of the knowledge needed to run Halo. A lot of information is included but some less-important details are omitted. As with most things, google is your friend and you should be able to use it to solve many questions you might have. Watching tutorials is probably the easiest method of learning video production.

How to add and edit pages​

This website is built using Docusaurus 2, a modern static website generator. This means that every time the files are changed on GitHub, updated HTML files are generated and published. Building a site this way is isn't as customizable as a wordpress site, but it allows anyone to easily write a lot of organized content with Markdown (.md) files. It's also extremely simple to host using Cloudflare Pages.

The easiest way to add and edit pages is with GitHub Codespaces. Click here to open up the editor. Once you're ready to publish changes, click the "Stage all changes" button in the version control tab. Then add a commit message, and click the checkmark to commit and push. Within 90s, the site will be rebuilt and deployed on Cloudflare Pages.

tip

Every page has an "Edit this page" link at the bottom that will take you to the specific file in Codespaces.

Documentation for VSCode version control

Editing locally (advanced)​

If you'd like to edit the site on your local computer, you can directly download the GitHub repository. By starting the development server, you can easily preview changes before pushing them to production.

1. Prerequisites​

  • Install Git. Git is the underlying tool used to connect with GitHub. You should install it using these instructions. There are a lot of unnecessary options in the Windows and Mac installer, so just click the next button until you get to the end.
  • Install the GitHub CLI. The Github Command Line Interface is required to securely login to GitHub.
  • Install an up-to-date version of Node JS. Node is required to run the docusaurus development server.

In order to access this private repository, you must log in using account that belongs to the stahalo GitHub organization. Log in with the following command:

$ gh auth login

2. Clone the Repository​

$ git clone https://github.com/stahalo/halo-wiki.git

The clone command downloads a git repository that contains all of the wiki's content. The repo keeps track of changes and automatically rebuilds and publishes the wiki when changes are committed and pushed.

$ cd halo/wiki

The cd command changes the directory you're working with. In order to work with the wiki, you'll need to navigate the terminal there.

3. Install Dependencies​

$ npm install

The npm install command downloads all the necessary packages to run the development environment.

4. Start local server​

$ npm run start

The npm run start command builds the website locally and serves it through a local development server, ready for you to view at http://localhost:3000.

Open docs/intro.md (this page) and edit some lines: the site reloads automatically and displays your changes.

5. Commit and push changes​

$ git add -A
$ git commit
$ git push

These three commands will stage all changed files, commit them, and sync them with GitHub. Once the push is complete, a build job will run automatically.