202602102209 - digital-garden-public-site-setup

Main Topic

Q: How do I publish selected Obsidian notes as a public digital garden while keeping my vault private?

A reliable architecture is to keep your Obsidian vault repo private, and publish only selected notes to a separate digital garden site repository. The site repo is what Vercel deploys. In practice, the Obsidian Digital Garden plugin is designed for this exact workflow.

The core idea:

• Vault repo stays private and remains your source of truth.
• Site repo is a separate repo created from the digital garden template, which receives published notes via the plugin.
• Vercel is connected to the site repo and deploys on each push to the production branch.

🌲 Branching Questions

Q: What is the recommended architecture, and why?

Use the Obsidian Digital Garden plugin to publish notes to a dedicated site repository created from the oleeskild/digitalgarden template. This keeps the vault private while the site is built and deployed from the site repo.

Reasons this is a good default:

• Clear separation of concerns: private knowledge capture vs public publishing.
• Lower risk: only notes explicitly published are pushed to the site repo.
• Operational simplicity: Vercel deploys automatically from the repo.

Q: How do I set it up end-to-end?

1. Create the site repository

• Start from the digital garden template and create your own copy (the template repo offers a Deploy to Vercel flow that creates a GitHub repo and a Vercel project).
• Keep the site repository separate from your vault repository.

2. Configure GitHub credentials for the plugin

• Create a fine-grained GitHub personal access token scoped only to the site repository.
• Minimum permissions are typically Contents: read and write. Avoid granting broader scopes.

3. Configure the Obsidian Digital Garden plugin

• Set your GitHub username.
• Set the site repository name.
• Set the branch (commonly main).
• Paste the fine-grained token.

4. Configure Vercel

• Ensure the production branch is the same branch the plugin pushes to (commonly main).
• Each push to the production branch triggers a production deploy.

5. Custom domain (optional)

• Add your domain in Vercel project settings.
• Update DNS records at your registrar as Vercel instructs.

Q: Where should configuration live in the site repo for easy management?

The digital garden template supports a customization entry point in src/helpers/userSetup.js. To keep configuration centralized and easy to update:

• Create src/helpers/userConfig.js with your settings.
• Import userConfig from userSetup.js.

Keep styling overrides isolated:

• Put CSS overrides in src/site/styles/user/ so template updates are less painful.

Q: How do I keep the private vault safe while the site is public?

• Publish only explicitly marked notes and review changes before publishing.
• Treat the site repo as public-facing, even if the repo itself is private.
• Do not put secrets in notes or frontmatter.
• Keep the GitHub token least-privilege and scoped only to the site repo; rotate it if you suspect exposure.
• Enable 2FA on GitHub and Vercel.

Q: What is the publish workflow, and when does Vercel deploy?

• In a note you want public, set frontmatter dg-publish: true.
• In Obsidian, run the plugin’s publish command (single note or batch).
• The plugin commits and pushes changes to the site repo.
• Vercel automatically deploys on every push to the production branch.

Q: What information do I need to have ready?

• Your GitHub username.
• The name of the site repository.
• A fine-grained GitHub token scoped to the site repository.
• Optional: your custom domain.

References

• Obsidian Digital Garden repository: https://github.com/oleeskild/obsidian-digital-garden
• Digital Garden docs: https://dg-docs.ole.dev
• Vercel Git integration docs: https://vercel.com/docs/deployments/git
• Vercel custom domains: https://vercel.com/docs/domains