From Obsidian to the site: Obsidian

On this page you prepare the vault: the folders, four settings, a note template and the GitHub repository. No community plugin is required. The guide uses only Templates, which ships with Obsidian.

1. Install Obsidian and create the vault

Download Obsidian from obsidian.md/download (Windows, macOS or Linux). It is free for any use and does not require an account.

The first time you open it, choose Create new vault, give it a name (My vault in this guide) and choose where to keep it. If you already have a vault, use yours: nothing that follows touches the notes already in it.

2. Create the folders

Create three folders at the root of the vault:

Folder	What it is for
blog/	Published notes. Everything here goes to the site
drafts/	Posts in progress
templates/	The post note template

Keep posts out of subfolders inside blog/. The Astro template turns the path inside it into the page address, so a note at blog/travel/japan.md would end up at /blog/travel/japan/. Put notes directly in blog/, and images in blog/images/.

3. Adjust links and images

In Settings → Files and links, change four options:

Option	Value	Why
Use [[Wikilinks]]	off	The site does not understand the [[note]] format and shows it as text. With this off, Obsidian creates links and images in Markdown format
New link format	Relative path to file	The image path becomes relative to the note (images/photo.png), which is what the site looks for
Automatically update internal links	on	When you move a note or an image, Obsidian fixes the links that point to it
Default location for new attachments	In subfolder under current folder, named images	An image pasted into a note goes into the images/ folder next to the note

With these settings, pasting an image into a note in blog/ creates the file in blog/images/, with a name that starts with Pasted image followed by the date, and writes a link like this one into the note (name simplified):

![](images/Pasted%20image%2020261015.png)

The Astro template accepts that link as is, with the spaces encoded.

An image pasted into a draft goes to drafts/images/. When the post moves to the blog, move the note and its images: the note into blog/ and the images into blog/images/. Obsidian fixes the links on both moves.

4. Note name and address

The file name becomes the page address. The Astro template turns capitals into lowercase and spaces into hyphens:

Note	Address
blog/My First Post.md	/blog/my-first-post/
blog/second-post.md	/blog/second-post/
blog/Café Notes.md	/blog/café-notes/

Accents stay in the address. For an address without accents, give the note a name without accents, or keep the name and set the address with the slug property:

slug: cafe-notes

Renaming a published note changes its address, and anyone with the old link lands on an error page.

5. Create the post template

The Astro template requires three properties in every post: title, description and pubDate. An Obsidian note template fills them in for you.

1. In Settings → Core plugins, turn on Templates.
2. In Settings → Templates, under Template folder location, choose templates.
3. Create the note templates/Post.md with this content:

---
title: "{{title}}"
description: 
pubDate: {{date}}
---

To start a post, create a note in drafts/, name it and use Insert template (the icon in the sidebar, or the command palette). Obsidian replaces {{title}} with the note’s name and {{date}} with today’s date, in YYYY-MM-DD format. The description is yours to write. If you leave it empty, the site refuses the note when you publish, which works as a reminder.

So that you have something to look at in the next steps, create a note in blog/ now, for example blog/My first post.md, insert the template, fill in the description and write a paragraph.

Two optional properties of the Astro template:

Property	Example	What it does
heroImage	images/cover.jpg	Cover image, at the top of the post and in the list
updatedDate	2026-10-20	Date of the last revision, shown as “Last updated on” below the publication date

6. Put the vault on GitHub

Automatic publishing starts from GitHub, so the vault needs to be in a repository there. Use a private repository: it holds the whole vault, including the notes that never go to the site.

With GitHub Desktop:

1. File → Add local repository and choose the vault folder.
2. Since the folder is not a repository yet, GitHub Desktop offers to create one. Accept.
3. Publish repository, with Keep this code private checked.

Day to day, pushing the vault means writing a sentence about the change, clicking Commit to main and then Push origin.

To push without leaving Obsidian, there is the community plugin Obsidian Git: its Commit-and-sync command commits, pulls and pushes your changes. It is optional and needs Git installed on your computer.