[TEMPLATE] How to Write a Blog Post

🐸 This post teaches you how to create your own blog post.
It is a post and also a template. Copy this file to start.

---

🧱 1. File Naming

All posts live in _posts/
Filename must follow this format:

YYYY-MM-DD-title-of-post.md

📌 This post is named:
_posts/2025-07-17-template-post-guide.md

---

📋 2. Front Matter

This block at the top tells Jekyll/Chirpy how to display your post.

---
title: "My Amazing Post Title"
date: 2025-07-17 09:00:00 +1000
categories: [main-topic, optional-subtopic]
tags: [keyword1, keyword2]
pin: false
comments: true
thumbnail: /assets/img/posts/my-thumb.jpg
---

Breakdown:

Field	Description
title	Main title
date	Date/time for ordering
categories	Primary category list
tags	Tag keywords for search
pin	true will “stick” this post at the top
comments	Enables Giscus/Disqus/etc
thumbnail	Path to image (used in previews)

---

🖼️ 3. Thumbnails & Images

Place images inside /assets/img/posts/

• Thumbnails should be ~800×400 or square
• Use web-optimized JPEG/PNG

Use Markdown for inline images:

![Alt text](/assets/img/posts/my-image.jpg)

To center + resize:

<p align="center">
  <img src="/assets/img/posts/my-image.jpg" alt="Description of image" width="400"/>
</p>

---

🐸 4. Markdown Content

You can use:

Headers

## This is an H2
### This is an H3

Bold, Italic, Lists

**bold**, *italic*, `code`
- bullet
1. numbered

Blockquotes

> This is a quote.

Code Blocks

```python
def frog():
    return "ribbit"
```

---

🔖 5. Tags & Categories

Chirpy shows:

• Tags in the sidebar & search
• Categories for organization (can be nested)

Use sensible lowercase tags like:

tags: [art, frogs, updates]
categories: [life, frogs]

---

🚀 6. Publishing

Once your post is saved to _posts/:

git add _posts/2025-07-17-my-post.md
git commit -m "add new post"
git push

Chirpy will auto-rebuild your site via GitHub Pages Actions.

---

✅ 7. Final Checklist

• Filename is in YYYY-MM-DD-title.md format
• Front matter exists and is valid YAML
• At least one category and tag
• Thumbnail is placed in /assets/img/posts/
• Post added to _posts/ folder
• You pushed it to GitHub

---

🐸 8. Example Thumbnail Display

Here’s how this post’s thumbnail might appear:

---

Feel free to copy this file as your starting point for each post.
Delete sections that aren’t needed—this is just a guide.