blog

The fslab blog

Build the blog

Prerequisites

• .NET 6.0 SDK

• Any conda distribution (e.g. anaconda or miniconda)

• dotnet tool restore to install the fornax tool that is used to build the website

• conda create --name fslab-blog --file requirements.txt to set up the conda environment

develop locally in watch mode

• conda activate fslab-blog (this has to be done once for each development session)
• go into the /src folder: cd src
• dotnet fornax watch to start the site generator in watch mode
• go to 127.0.0.1:8080 to see the blog

add content

blog posts

posts are generated from the contents of folders in /src/posts.

To add a new post:

• add a folder with a url-safe name of your post to /src/posts

• create a post_config.md file. this file should only create metadata about your post, and must have this structure:

  ---
  title: <your post title>
  author: <your name>
  author_link: <a link>
  category: <post category>
  date: <YYYY-MM-DD>
  summary: <post summary>
  preview_image: images/<your_image_here.png>
  ---
  

  • title is the title of your post
  • author is the author of the post (most likely your name)
  • author_link is a link that will be associated with your name. You can for example link your github or twitter account here
  • category is one of fsharp, datascience, advanced
  • date is the date of submission in ISO 8601
  • summary is an optional short summary of the post. It is recommended to add for SEO.
  • perview_image is an optional image that will be shown on post previews. ideally a 2-by-1 or 3-by-1 image with a width of 1200px. It is recommended to add for SEO.

• create a post.ipynb file that contains your blogpost. This notebook will be parsed and rendered to a html site. do not forget to save the notebook with cell output, as the notebook will not be executed on site generation.

graph gallery

To add a graph post:

• add a folder with a url-safe name of your post to /src/graph-gallery

• create a graph_post_config.md file. this file should only create metadata about your post, and must have this structure:

  ---
  title: <your post title>
  author: <your name>
  author_link: <a link>
  graph_category: <chart category>
  date: <YYYY-MM-DD>
  summary: <post summary>
  preview_image: images/<your_image_here.png>
  ---
  

  • title is the title of your post
  • author is the author of the post (most likely your name)
  • author_link is a link that will be associated with your name. You can for example link your github or twitter account here
  • graph_category is one of basic, distribution, finance, 3d, map, special (corresponding to the categories of plotly's docs)
  • date is the date of submission in ISO 8601
  • summary is an optional short summary of the post. It is recommended to add for SEO.
  • perview_image is an optional image that will be shown on post previews. ideally a 2-by-1 or 3-by-1 image with a width of 1200px. It is recommended to add for SEO.

• create a <language>.ipynb file that contains your graph post. This notebook will be parsed and rendered to a html site. Ideally, you provide both fsharp.ipynb and csharp.ipynb, but F#-only is okay as well. do not forget to save the notebook with cell output, as the notebook will not be executed on site generation.

update a post

• Update an existing blog or graph gallery post in line with the instructions above.
• Add metadata about the update to the post_config.md or graph_post_config.md according to this structure:

  last_updated_on: <YYYY-MM-DD>
  last_updated_by: <your name>
  last_updated_by_link: <a link>
  

  • last_updated_on is the date of the last update in ISO 8601
  • last_updated_by is an optional name of the contributing author
  • last_updated_by_link is a optional link that will be associated with the contributing author name. Provide both last_updated_by and last_updated_by_link to display contributing author information. You can leave them out, for example, if you are updating your own post.