Publishing with Flowershow - Design

Designing the Flowershow publishing experience.

User Experience

General Approach

You have your content [in obsidian]
You install X where X can be obsidian plugin, Flowershow app template, Flowershow command line tool
Publish
View and share

Obsidian plugin

You have your content [in obsidian]
You install flowershow plugin
You configure the plugin with flowershow token
- Do any other configuration
Publish button (and do this each time you want to republish)
Get a link: https://xyz.flowershow.sites
Wait for (re)build
Share the link with your colleagues
Profit!

Self-publishing via github

(? with Semi-wizard for github action setup)

you have content in github
enable github pages
install this github action
run it
Hey presto

[Note: if people will to install the flowershow template then they could use netlify / vercel etc]

Self-publishing in the rawest way

Original example below. See flowershow-setup-v0.0.1-for-alpha-users-june-2022 for full gory details atm.

You have a have some markdown files (and maybe data). Preferably in a git repo.
You install the flowershow app template (later this could be encapsulated in a command line tool)
You configure the app with your content in step 1
You deploy: self-service (to your static site hoster of choice) or cloud (using flowershow tooling)
[Share the result]

Command line or app + cloud ⏫

Have your content on disk
Download flowershow app/cli (npm install flowershow or even npx flowershow publish or download it)
In your directory run flowershow publish [filename]
Get a response like: live at https://xyz.flowershow.sites/

Original Example

This is an illustrative example of how it works. There are 4 steps:

You have a have some markdown files (and maybe data). Preferably in a git repo.
You install the flowershow app template (later this could be encapsulated in a command line tool)
You configure the app with your content in step 1
You deploy: self-service (to your static site hoster of choice) or cloud (using flowershow tooling)
[Share the result]

0. I have my repo e.g.

/README.md [data.csv] [/notes # more markdown]

1. Install a template

Template would be a nextjs app template

i.e. a git repo with a working nextjs

2. Integrate the content from step 0

e.g. configure that template or symlink files

See e.g. https://github.com/datopian/portal.js/blob/main/examples/data-literate/datahub-portal-local-cli.js

3. Deploy

Self-service ≥ instructions for cloudflare pages, vercel, etc

Cloud ≥ install our plugin (e.g. in obsidian) / use our service (point our service at your git repo)

Share the result with others: "here's my site …"

Notes

2022-09-14

Choices about how to deploy

graph TD

a[I want to self-publish]
b[I want to cloud publish]

Option 1: "NextJS template option"

Best:

if you are happy with git, nextjs etc
if you want to customize "under the hood" a lot

# first time only
npx flowershow install
# add flowershow permanently to my git repo including symlinks
git add .flowershow/*

# configure nextjs build on vercel, netlify, github actions, (❌ cloudflare because issues with symlink and root folders)

Option 2: "Flowershow as a build tool"

Best

Want simplicity
Ease of upgrading
if you arent' familiar with git, nextjs etc

Self-publishing

# future: this could be wrapped into build (ie. install if not present already)
npx flowershow install
npx flowershow build ...

# now instructions to user on how to publish their files

Cloud publishing

npx flowershow publish

# output
https://xyz-happy-days.sites.flowershow.app