Building an Org Mode Website: Part 1

This is the beginning of my effort to rebuild kigrasoft.com using the Org Mode publishing capability. I thought I would document my experience in trying to build a robust website through a simple process using Org Mode's built in capabilities. If you follow along this will not be a refined 'how-to build an org-mode website', but rather more the diary entries as I try to figure out and refine the process.

First one needs to create directories to hold the org source files and the published html files. Then the Emacs variable org-publish-project-alist has to be set for publishing the site. For an initial config I started by slightly modifying the simple example from the Org Mode Manual.

(setq org-publish-project-alist
      '(("org"
         :base-directory "~/org/"
         :publishing-function org-html-publish-to-html
         :publishing-directory "~/public_html"
         :section-numbers nil
         :with-toc nil)))

The next step is to create the minimum content for a basic site. This article will be one of the initial posts, but what is needed is an index.org file for the homepage. The initial effort will just be a basic page with a title and links to the initial posts. Here is what the initial draft looks like.

* KigraSoft

  Welcome.

* Programmer Logs

- [[file:logs/2025/20250314--building-an-org-mode-website-part-1.org][Building an Org Mode Website: Part 1]]
- [[file:logs/2025/20250315--rebuilding-in-org-mode.org][Rebuilding in Org Mode]]
- [[file:logs/2024/20240101--InitialPost.org][KigraSoft - Initial Post]]

The final step is to publish the website using org-publish and copy the generated files to the webserver.