🚀 Daily Article Automation - Quick Setup Guide

Your automated daily blog article system is ready! Here’s how to get it running:

✅ What’s Already Done

• ✅ Article generator script created
• ✅ GitHub Actions workflow configured
• ✅ Email notification system built
• ✅ Test system verified working
• ✅ 20 UX topics and 4 article templates ready

🔧 Quick Setup (5 minutes)

1. Set Up Email Notifications

To receive daily email notifications with article URLs:

1. Get Gmail App Password:
   • Go to Google Account Settings
   • Security → 2-Step Verification → App passwords
   • Generate password for “Mail”
2. Add to GitHub Secrets:
   • Go to your GitHub repository
   • Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions
   • Add new secret: EMAIL_PASSWORD = your app password

2. Enable GitHub Actions

The workflow is already configured to run daily at 9:00 AM UTC. It will:

• Generate a new UX article
• Add it to your blog
• Commit and push changes
• Send you an email with the URL

🔎 SEO and Syndication Rules

• Canonical first: The site emits rel=canonical, JSON‑LD, and OpenGraph pointing to haiderali.co. Always publish here first, then syndicate.
• Cross‑posting: When republishing on Medium/DEV/Substack/LinkedIn, set the canonical URL to the original post so SEO accrues to your site. See SYNDICATION.md for platform steps.
• Featured image + credit: The generator fetches an Unsplash image and displays author credit on the post page. Add UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY in repo Secrets for photographer attribution.
• Clean URLs: Categories are normalized to hyphenated slugs (e.g., ux-design/prototyping) to avoid encoded spaces like %20.
• Redirects: If a post’s URL changes (e.g., category normalization), the repo uses jekyll-redirect-from to add 301 redirects automatically.

3. Test It Now

You can test the system immediately:

1. Go to GitHub Actions tab in your repository
2. Find “Daily Article Generator” workflow
3. Click “Run workflow” to test manually

📧 What You’ll Receive

Every day at 9:00 AM UTC, you’ll get an email like this:

Subject: New Blog Post Published: The Complete Guide to User Research in 2024

Hello Haider!

Your daily blog post has been successfully generated and published!

📝 Article Details:
- Title: The Complete Guide to User Research in 2024
- URL: https://haiderali.co/2024/01/15/the-complete-guide-to-user-research-in-2024/
- Published: 2024-01-15 09:00:00

The article has been automatically added to your Jekyll site and should appear in the latest section of your blog.

🎯 Article Topics

The system will randomly select from 20 UX topics:

• User Research, Design Systems, Mobile UX
• Accessibility, User Psychology, Information Architecture
• Interaction Design, Usability Testing, Design Thinking
• And 11 more topics!

📝 Article Types

4 different article formats:

• Guides: “The Complete Guide to {topic} in 2024”
• Tips: “10 Essential {topic} Tips Every Designer Should Know”
• Trends: “The Future of {topic}: Trends Shaping UX in 2024”
• Case Studies: “How {topic} Transformed Our User Experience”

🔍 Monitoring

• Check GitHub Actions: Repository → Actions tab
• View Articles: They appear in your blog’s latest section
• Email Logs: Check GitHub Actions logs for email status

🛠️ Customization

Want to modify topics or templates? Edit:

• scripts/config.json - Topics and templates
• scripts/daily_article_generator.py - Article content structure

🚨 Troubleshooting

No emails?

• Check GitHub Secrets has EMAIL_PASSWORD
• Verify Gmail app password is correct

Articles not appearing?

• Check GitHub Actions logs
• Verify Jekyll build is successful

Want to change schedule?

• Edit .github/workflows/daily-article.yml
• Change the cron schedule (currently 0 9 * * * = 9 AM UTC daily)

🎉 You’re All Set!

Once you add the EMAIL_PASSWORD secret to GitHub, the system will:

1. Run automatically every day at 9:00 AM UTC
2. Generate a unique UX article
3. Publish it to your blog
4. Email you the URL

No manual intervention required! 🚀

Need help? Check the detailed documentation in scripts/README.md