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Linking to my work on other sites

Although I write a lot of posts on https://alexwlchan.net, it's not the only place I have writing. For example, I've written articles for Last Week in AWS and the Wellcome Collection development blog.

I want a page on my personal site that links to everything I've written elsewhere, so I have a complete record of everything that I've published online.

I also want a local backup of that work. I'm proud of it, and I don't want the only copy to be on a site that I don't control – I could lose access to it at any time. (For more on this, see why developers should archive their old content by Stephanie Morillo.)

How I record my other work

I have a YAML file (elsewhere.yml) where I create new entries for every article, talk or podcast I do:

writing:
  - date: 2021-05-07
    title: "What is an Edge Location in AWS? A Simple Explanation"
    url: "https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/what-is-an-edge-location-in-aws-a-simple-explanation/"
    publication: "Last Week in AWS"
  - date: 2020-05-20
    title: "Building Wellcome Collection's new archival storage service"
    url: "https://stacks.wellcomecollection.org/building-wellcome-collections-new-archival-storage-service-3f68ff21927e"
    publication: "Wellcome Collection development blog"

This format is deliberately lightweight: I can add new entries quickly, as soon as something is published. (If I can't do it quickly, it's easy for me to procrastinate or forget to add something.)

How I display my other work

The YAML file is in the _data folder, which is a special folder in Jekyll. I can load that data in a Markdown file which renders the entries as HTML.

You can see the rendered page at https://alexwlchan.net/elsewhere/

How I archive my other work

I save all my articles in two formats: a Safari webarchive and a PDF. I save them to my home computer.

I add the paths of the saved articles to the YAML file:

- date: 2021-08-13
  title: "10 Free Cloud Databases You Should Consider (And 1 You Shouldn’t)"
  url: "https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/10-free-cloud-databases-you-should-consider-and-1-you-shouldnt/"
  publication: "Last Week in AWS"
  archived_paths:
  - "/Volumes/Media (Sapphire)/backups/alexwlchan.net/elsewhere/lastweekinaws-10-free-cloud-databases-you-should-consider-and-1-you-shouldnt/10\
    \ Free Cloud Databases You Should Consider (And 1 You Shouldn\u2019t) - Last Week\
    \ in AWS.webarchive"
  - "/Volumes/Media (Sapphire)/backups/alexwlchan.net/elsewhere/lastweekinaws-10-free-cloud-databases-you-should-consider-and-1-you-shouldnt/10\
    \ Free Cloud Databases You Should Consider (And 1 You Shouldn\u2019t) - Last Week\
    \ in AWS.pdf"

As part of the site linting process, I check for the presence of archived_paths -- if there aren't any, the site refuses to build. This means I can't forget to save a copy of my articles.

Relevant code:

  • archive_elsewhere.py goes through the list of articles, finds any that haven't been archived, and prompts me to save them. It updates elsewhere.yml with the new paths.
  • linter.rb checks that every article has an archived copy as part of the linting checks.