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I've been looking for a way to host my notes like a website locally. When I'm not writing but only want to refer to my notes, I'd much rather have something cle

by ctxc 3y ago

I've been looking for a way to host my notes like a website locally. When I'm not writing but only want to refer to my notes, I'd much rather have something clean like that without the editor UI. Like a docusaurus instance. Suggestions?

nerdponx 3y ago
Any Markdown-based static site generator could work. But the editor UI I think is where a lot of the power of a tool like Obsidian comes from. The main benefit for me is that it takes the pain out of cross-linking, so you can have a much more richly linked collection of notes, more like "hypermedia" than a journal. Another option could be Tiddlywiki, which does have an editor UI but is self-contained in a web app.
creativeembassy 3y ago
There are a number of Obsidian plugins that will automatically convert your notes into an actual website. I don't use any but I know they exist. (I don't use them _yet_, I have a future plan to completely remake my website and Obsidian is part of it). Does that fit the bill? Or do you want something more native-feeling?
jerlendds 3y ago
Check out https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz (docs site can be found here: https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/ https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/ )! I found it recently and customized it a bit to redo my personal website (https://studium.dev https://studium.dev don't mind the header on mobile, I need to fix that still). I plan to transfer my Logseq notes to it eventually but you could just as easily do the same for any markdown based notes
- agrounds 3y ago
  Seconding quartz. I also use it and love it. It converts your markdown files to static HTML, understands Obsidian-specific markdown features, and just looks really nice IMO. For publishing, I use Cloudflare pages to host the static HTML and Cloudflare workers to build the HTML whenever I push a commit to the GitHub repo hosting my markdown files. Quartz has documentation showing you how to set this up, and it’s all within the free offerings of Cloudflare.
- jskherman 3y ago
  Thirding this! It has proper support for Obsidian Flavored Markdown (e.g. wikilinks and callouts) and a pretty good search. I configured my setup to easily publish to CloudFlare Pages with a shortcut that I can trigger via Powertoys Run/Flow Launcher; deploying is only one Alt-Space away.
- fallenbutton 3y ago
  beat me to recommending this LOL. has good search and pretty feature rich. thorough documentation makes it easy to set up/customize.
Brajeshwar 3y ago
I have an Obsidian Vault for my website, deployed via Jekyll. Obsidian is part of my current workflow for notes, documentation, and others, helping me write articles for my blog and other sites. I chose Jekyll because Github has it by default and is supported by almost every other SSG service/platform, such as Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, etc. This lets me write locally on Obsidian without running Jekyll to preview my website. Jekyll is slow, as I have over 1,700+ articles (last time I checked, even after pruning). I can look at other options, but that is not my focus, and I honestly do not care. I push it to GitHub, and eventually, in the next couple of minutes, it gets updated. Right now, I'm on a slow experiment to separate the content (markdown / plain text) from the styling entirely. So, I can play around with the design and themes but leave the content. Akin to how I can move on and walk away from Obsidian if needed - a tool on top of my content. To me, I feel that VitePress is lot cleaner, leaner, and simpler than Docusaurus - https://vitepress.dev https://vitepress.dev
- slorber 3y ago
  Docusaurus maintainer here. Can you expand that feeling? What makes you feel Docusaurus as complex?
mtsolitary 3y ago
Org roam and org roam UI?
mmahemoff 3y ago
Since Obsidian and Jekyll both use Markdown, you can create a Jekyll project, open it as an Obsidian vault. You could then use Jekyll to run it as a web server on your own machine. (It also works nicely with Github Pages for public websites, since that has built-in Jekyll support.) There's also a third-party Jekyll theme specifically for this purpose (https://github.com/Jekyll-Garden/jekyll-garden.github.io https://github.com/Jekyll-Garden/jekyll-garden.github.io).
katet 3y ago
MkDocs with the "Material for MkDocs" theme and it has a docker based builder image if you want a one-line isolated build command. Mostly pure Markdown with opt-in syntax extensions for fancy things like card grids or tables.

by ctxc 3y ago

nerdponx 3y ago

Any Markdown-based static site generator could work. But the editor UI I think is where a lot of the power of a tool like Obsidian comes from. The main benefit for me is that it takes the pain out of cross-linking, so you can have a much more richly linked collection of notes, more like "hypermedia" than a journal. Another option could be Tiddlywiki, which does have an editor UI but is self-contained in a web app.

creativeembassy 3y ago

There are a number of Obsidian plugins that will automatically convert your notes into an actual website. I don't use any but I know they exist. (I don't use them _yet_, I have a future plan to completely remake my website and Obsidian is part of it). Does that fit the bill? Or do you want something more native-feeling?

jerlendds 3y ago

Check out https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz (docs site can be found here: https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/ https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/ )! I found it recently and customized it a bit to redo my personal website (https://studium.dev https://studium.dev don't mind the header on mobile, I need to fix that still). I plan to transfer my Logseq notes to it eventually but you could just as easily do the same for any markdown based notes

agrounds 3y ago
Seconding quartz. I also use it and love it. It converts your markdown files to static HTML, understands Obsidian-specific markdown features, and just looks really nice IMO. For publishing, I use Cloudflare pages to host the static HTML and Cloudflare workers to build the HTML whenever I push a commit to the GitHub repo hosting my markdown files. Quartz has documentation showing you how to set this up, and it’s all within the free offerings of Cloudflare.
jskherman 3y ago
Thirding this! It has proper support for Obsidian Flavored Markdown (e.g. wikilinks and callouts) and a pretty good search. I configured my setup to easily publish to CloudFlare Pages with a shortcut that I can trigger via Powertoys Run/Flow Launcher; deploying is only one Alt-Space away.
fallenbutton 3y ago
beat me to recommending this LOL. has good search and pretty feature rich. thorough documentation makes it easy to set up/customize.

Brajeshwar 3y ago

I have an Obsidian Vault for my website, deployed via Jekyll. Obsidian is part of my current workflow for notes, documentation, and others, helping me write articles for my blog and other sites. I chose Jekyll because Github has it by default and is supported by almost every other SSG service/platform, such as Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, etc. This lets me write locally on Obsidian without running Jekyll to preview my website. Jekyll is slow, as I have over 1,700+ articles (last time I checked, even after pruning). I can look at other options, but that is not my focus, and I honestly do not care. I push it to GitHub, and eventually, in the next couple of minutes, it gets updated. Right now, I'm on a slow experiment to separate the content (markdown / plain text) from the styling entirely. So, I can play around with the design and themes but leave the content. Akin to how I can move on and walk away from Obsidian if needed - a tool on top of my content. To me, I feel that VitePress is lot cleaner, leaner, and simpler than Docusaurus - https://vitepress.dev https://vitepress.dev

slorber 3y ago
Docusaurus maintainer here. Can you expand that feeling? What makes you feel Docusaurus as complex?

mtsolitary 3y ago

Org roam and org roam UI?

mmahemoff 3y ago

Since Obsidian and Jekyll both use Markdown, you can create a Jekyll project, open it as an Obsidian vault. You could then use Jekyll to run it as a web server on your own machine. (It also works nicely with Github Pages for public websites, since that has built-in Jekyll support.) There's also a third-party Jekyll theme specifically for this purpose (https://github.com/Jekyll-Garden/jekyll-garden.github.io https://github.com/Jekyll-Garden/jekyll-garden.github.io).

katet 3y ago

MkDocs with the "Material for MkDocs" theme and it has a docker based builder image if you want a one-line isolated build command. Mostly pure Markdown with opt-in syntax extensions for fancy things like card grids or tables.