How to Create Blog Posts for Entropy Exchange

guide
documentation
Author

Rick Montgomery

Published

March 7, 2025

Creating Blog Posts for Entropy Exchange

Welcome to the Entropy Exchange blog platform! As part of Synaptiq’s mission to advance AI for the benefit of humankind, this platform serves as a bridge between our technical expertise and the broader community. This guide will walk you through the process of creating and publishing blog posts using our Quarto-based system and helpful Makefile commands.

Content Types and Guidelines

External-Facing Blog Posts

The Entropy Exchange blog is designed to share our insights, research, and perspectives on AI and technology with the broader community. All blog posts must be approved as external-facing content before publication. These posts should:

  • Focus on topics that align with Synaptiq’s mission of advancing AI for humankind
  • Be accessible to a general technical audience
  • Include clear explanations and practical examples
  • Avoid internal implementation details
  • Be reviewed and approved by the content team

Internal Engineering Playbooks

Engineering playbooks and technical documentation with detailed code snippets are for internal use only and should not be listed on the homepage. These documents serve as valuable resources for our engineering team but are not intended for external distribution. See our Engineering Playbook for examples of internal documentation format and best practices.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have the following installed:

  • Quarto: Our publishing system
  • Ollama: For AI assistance (optional)
  • uv: Python package manager

You can install these prerequisites with:

make install

Creating a New Blog Post

The easiest way to create a new blog post is to use our Makefile command:

make post your-post-title

This command will:

  1. Create a new directory under posts/ with your post title
  2. Generate an index.qmd file with the proper frontmatter
  3. Set the author to your system username
  4. Set the date to today’s date

For example, running make post ai-trends-2025 will create:

  • A directory at posts/ai-trends-2025/
  • A file at posts/ai-trends-2025/index.qmd with basic frontmatter

Content Review Process

Before publishing your post:

  1. Ensure your content aligns with Synaptiq’s mission and values
  2. Review the content for technical accuracy and clarity
  3. Submit for internal review
  4. Once approved, set draft: false in the frontmatter
  5. Request a PR review
  6. After merging to main, the GitHub Actions workflow will automatically build and deploy the site

Editing Your Post

After creating the post, you’ll need to edit the index.qmd file. The file uses Quarto Markdown, which supports:

  • Standard Markdown formatting
  • Code blocks with syntax highlighting
  • Math equations
  • Diagrams
  • Interactive elements

Frontmatter Options

The top section of your post (between the --- markers) contains metadata:

---
title: "Your Post Title"
author: "Your Name"
date: "2025-03-07"
categories: [category1, category2]
image: "optional-thumbnail.jpg"
draft: true  # Set to false when ready to publish
---

Adding Images and Resources

To include images in your post:

  1. Place image files in the same directory as your post’s index.qmd
  2. Reference them in your markdown:
![Image description](image-filename.jpg)

Previewing Your Post

To see how your post looks before publishing:

make preview

This will start a local server and open a browser window with a preview of the entire blog. Any changes you make to your post will automatically refresh in the preview.

Advanced Features

Jupyter Notebooks

You can also create posts using Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb files). Place your notebook in the post directory and ensure it has the proper frontmatter at the top.

Code Execution

Quarto can execute code in your posts. See the Quarto documentation for details on how to include executable code blocks.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues:

  • Check that Quarto is properly installed
  • Ensure your frontmatter syntax is correct
  • Verify that all referenced files exist in the correct locations

Conclusion

With these tools and guidelines, you can contribute to the Entropy Exchange blog, helping to advance our mission of making AI more accessible and beneficial for all of humankind. The combination of Quarto’s powerful publishing features and our custom Makefile commands makes the process straightforward and efficient.

Happy blogging!