10 Steps to Join the BowTied Jungle

July 24, 2021

Welcome avatar!. The BowTied Chukar is joining the BowTied Jungle. We’re going to be writing about web development, Bitcoin, privacy, and our journey learning how to sell online. Here are 10 steps to join the BowTied Jungle with strong privacy and security options. If you are new to the Jungle, check out BowTiedBull’s FAQ for an introduction to the BowTied Community.

1. Check Twitter availability

Check to make sure your favorite BowTied animal is available on Twitter. You can also check out the BowTied Jungle directory.

Create a free ProtonMail email account for your BowTied animal.

Set up two-factor authentication (2FA) with Authy, ProtonMail instructions here. Save your 2FA backup codes in a password manager like Bitwarden.

3. Create BowTied Twitter account

At some point, you may be asked to verify your phone number. You can use Text Verified to get a one time use phone number for SMS verification if don’t want to provide your real mobile phone number.

Another option is to create a MySudo VOIP number to use with your BowtTied Jungle pseudonym.

Set up two-factor authentication (2FA) with Authy, Twitter instructions here. I’ve found once you set up 2FA, Twitter will not ask for you to provide a phone number again.

4. Create BowTied avatar

We used PIXL R, a free online photo editor, to put a bow tie on our chukar. Add your avatar to your Twitter account.

If you want to up your game with a more professional avatar. You can pay a Jungle member to create one for you…@bowtiedfarmer upgraded mine and has created many others for members of the Jungle. He even jollified mine for Christmas.

5. Buy your BowTied domain

Go to Namecheap and buy yourbowtiedanimal.com. It’s a good idea to buy your domain now even if you are going to use Substack or another hosted service where you don’t need your own domain. As the BowTied Jungle gets bigger you don’t want someone to buy it before you do.

Namecheap is not going to verify your name, address, and phone number so it is up to you to decide the accuracy of that information. Use your MySudo VOIP number if you have one.

You can purchase your domain with Bitcoin. We like using Strike to pay Bitcoin and Lightning invoices. It comes out of our US Token account and we don’t have to touch our Bitcoin in cold storage.

Set up two-factor authentication (2FA) with Authy, Namecheap instructions here.

[Steps 6-10 will guide you through creating your blog using the static site generator Gatsby and deploying on Netlify. For a more simple solution, use Substack or Wordpress. BowTied Opossum has an excellent WordPress guide if you go with that option. If you choose these options, you can skip down to the conclusion and writing your first blog post.]

6. Create BowTied Github account

We ran into an unexpected issue when we set up SSH for authentication on our new account. If you already use SSH for another GitHub account, you will get an error that your SSH key is already in use.

You want to create new SSH identity associated with your BowTied email address. Follow these instructions to create a new SSH identity and update your .ssh/config. Then update the hostname when creating or cloning your repo following the instructions here.

Set up two-factor authentication (2FA) with Authy, GitHub instructions here.

7. Update local git config

You don’t want to leak your regular email address when you push commits to GitHub.

You can create a folder to hold all of your BowTied animal projects and set up a local git config file to use your BowTied Animal ProtonMail email address for commits in these folders.

Update Global config ~/.gitconfig:

[user]
    name = John Doe
    email = john@doe.com

[includeIf "gitdir:~/bowtiedanimal/"]
    path = ~/bowtiedanimal/.gitconfig

Add BowTied Animal specific config ~/bowtiedanimal/.gitconfig:

[user]
    name = BowTied Animal
    email = bowtiedanimal@protonmail.com

Reference: Can I specify multiple users for myself in gitconfig?

8. Create and deploy blog

We used Gatsby because we’re familiar with JavaScript. Hugo and Jekyll are options if you are more comfortable with Go or Ruby.

We want to have full control over our site, but we also don’t want to spend a lot of time building and styling the blog from scratch.

We’re going to use the gatsby starter blog with all of the default styles and site organization.

An advantage of using a more established static site generator is there are plenty of blog posts already written about how to use it.

Use the Step By Step Guide to Deploy Gatsby on Netlify to create your Gatsby project and deploy it to Netlify with one exception we cover below.

Gatsby provides a bunch of different templates for your site. By default gatsby new uses the Gatsby Default Starter template.

If you want to choose a different template (e.g. Gatsby Starter Blog) change the following:

gatsby new gatsbynetlify

gatsby new bowtiedanimal-blog https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby-starter-blog

9. Set up custom domain

Now your site should be deployed to a Netlify address (e.g. https://a-bunch-of-words.netlify.com).

Use the Setting Up Domain with Namecheap & Netlify guide to connect your custom BowTied animal domain and your blog on Netlify. It may take some time to update your DNS and provision your SSL certificate.

Your blog is now up on your BowTied animal custom domain.

10. Update Gatsby template with your info

You have deployed your blog with the default sample content and now it is time to update the site with your information and your first blog post.

You want to update the following files with your information:

gatsby-config.js: This is the main configuration file for a Gatsby site. This is where you can specify information about your site (metadata) like the site title and description. Make sure to update the gatsby-plugin-manifest with your BowTied animal icon, see Add a Custom Icon to your Gatsby Site in Minutes.
src/images/profile-pic.png: Replace this file with your avatar.
src/components/bio.js: The info in this file is used in your main site page header and in the footer of each blog post. Some info is pulled from gatsby-config.js.
content/blog: Use the three sample posts to understand how to format your blog posts. Then delete them and add your first post.
Follow the How To Boost SEO Using Gatsby’s SEO Component and Gatsby React Helmet tutoral to update site metadata not included in the template project.
We ran into issues with our twitter:image and og:image not working properly. If you run into issues with your tweets not including a picture with the preview, see the Adding an SEO Component Guide or DM us and we’ll help you out.

The BowTied Chukar blog is on GitHub if you want to see the code for this site.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you’ve created your own BowTied animal! Now you’re all set to start publishing your blog posts and join the BowTied Jungle! Check out @DeGenJungle to join the Discord. #WAGMI