This chapter assumes nothing. If you already use Obsidian but have never made a website out of it, you are in the right place. If you know Quartz, skim it and carry on at 6 – Adapting.
The four pages
- 1.1 – What this template is — the idea behind it and the three decisions everything follows from.
- 1.2 – The tools — Obsidian, Quartz, QuartzControl and git: what each of them does and how they fit together.
- 1.3 – From note to website — the way a change travels from typing to the published page.
- 1.4 – How a page is built — the parts of a page, with their names, so that the later chapters can call them by name.
How this handbook is written
Source above, result below. In chapter 2 every element first shows what you type in Obsidian — in a grey box — and directly below it what the site makes of it. You can copy the box and compare the result.
“Out of the box” and “In this template”. In chapter 5 every page has these two paragraphs: what Quartz does without any help, and what the template changes about it, with the reason. Whoever compares their own site with this one finds the difference named there.
Measured, not assumed. Where a number stands — 44 px, 4.68:1, 250 of 254 pages — it was taken from the built site. That is why the handbook contains so many numbers: they can be checked.
Boxes with a meaning. A box of the type warning names something that is easy to get wrong. One of the type bug names a fault in Quartz or a plugin that the template cannot fix, only work around. note is an aside, tip a handy move. What the boxes look like is shown in All callout types.
Technical terms. A term not everyone knows is explained briefly the first time it appears on a page. All of them together stand in the Glossary.