↩ Back to Comfort Levels

You want a blog that you actually control—not some bullshit on a platform that can disappear tomorrow because a billionaire got bored. This is the easiest way to get there.

Before we start, here is the vocabulary these people use:

  • Forestry.md: The service that gets your writing onto the internet.
  • Obsidian: Where you actually write. It is a markdown editor, which sounds scary but just means “text with some formatting shortcuts.”
  • Domain: Your address on the web. Like yourname.com.
  • Domain registrar: Where you buy that address.
  • Garden: What Forestry.md calls your blog. Pretentious, but whatever.
  • Vault: What Obsidian calls your folder of notes.

This guide uses Forestry.md, which costs money eventually, but has a free tier generous enough to get you started. Think of it as training wheels. You will outgrow it, but it will teach you what matters.

A word on builds: Forestry.md gives you 30 builds per month on the free tier. Every time you publish a note or change a site setting, that is one build. If you write daily, that is 30 posts per month—one per day, no room for mistakes. Batch your edits. Get it right before you hit publish.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Install Obsidian

Download it from Obsidian.md. It is free, local, and does not phone home to some cloud service. Your notes stay on your machine until you explicitly publish them.

Step 2: Create Your Vault

  1. Open Obsidian.
  2. Click Create new vault.
  3. Name it whatever you want. “Blog” works fine.
  4. Pick where to save it. This folder is now your vault—everything lives here.
  5. Click Create.
  6. Open settings (gear icon in the left sidebar, or ⌘ + , on Mac / Ctrl + , on Windows).
  7. Go to Community plugins.
  8. Click Turn on community plugins.
  9. Close settings and leave Obsidian open.

Step 3: Create a Forestry.md account

Go to Forestry.md, click Start Your Garden, and sign up. Use the same email you actually check.

The Setup

Step 4: Plant your garden

  1. Once logged in, under Digital Gardens, name your garden.
  2. Click Plant Garden.

You will land on your garden’s dashboard. This is mission control—bookmark it.

Step 5: Connect Forestry.md to Obsidian

  1. Scroll down to Setup Guide and click it.
  2. Under Install Digital Garden Plugin, click Open in Obsidian.
  3. In Obsidian, click Install, then Enable.
  4. Click Options to open the plugin settings. (You can also get here from the left sidebar later.)
  5. Change Publish Platform to Forestry.md.
  6. Back on Forestry.md’s Setup Guide, click Reveal Garden Key.
  7. Copy that key.
  8. In Obsidian, paste it into the Garden Key field.

You should see your garden connected with usage displayed. If not, you did something wrong—go back and check.

Writing & Publishing

Step 6: Write your first note

  1. In Obsidian, click the new note icon (page with + in the top-left) or hit ⌘ + N / Ctrl + N.
  2. Name it. Hello World is traditional.
  3. Type something. It does not matter what. “I made a blog and it actually worked” is perfectly acceptable.
  4. Save it (⌘ + S / Ctrl + S). Obsidian auto-saves, but manual saves are a good habit.

Step 7: Set up your home page

  1. Make sure your note is open.
  2. Open the command palette (⌘ + P / Ctrl + P).
  3. Search for Set As Garden Home Page and select it.

This adds two properties automatically:

  • dg-home: ✅ — Makes this your landing page.
  • dg-publish: ✅ — Marks it for publishing.

You do not add these yourself. The command handles it.

Step 8: Publish your note

Remember: every publish is one of your 30 monthly builds. Make sure the note is how you want it before you publish.

  1. With your home page note open, open the command palette again.
  2. Search for Publish Active Note and select it.
  3. Wait about a minute. On your Forestry.md dashboard, click Refresh until it shows as published.

Step 9: Add publish flags to other notes

Any note you want public needs a flag. Everything else stays private in your vault.

  1. Open the note.
  2. Command palette (⌘ + P / Ctrl + P).
  3. Search for Add publish flag and select it.
  4. This adds dg-publish: ✅.
  5. Publish with Publish Active Note from the command palette.

Only flagged notes go live. Everything else stays yours.

Note: For future publishing, you can skip the Publish Active Note command and use the Publish All Notes Marked for Publish command instead. This will publish all notes that have the dg-publish flag set to true, and will help save your monthly builds.

The Moment of Truth

Step 10: Visit your garden

  1. Back on your Forestry.md dashboard, find your garden’s URL and click it.
  2. You should see your note, live on the internet, for anyone to read.
  3. If it is not there, wait a minute and refresh. The internet is sometimes slow.
  4. If it is still not there, reach out. My contact info is on my about page, or click the email icon at the bottom of any page. Yes, you can actually do this.

Making It a Blog

Right now you have one page. That is not a blog, that is a business card. To make it a blog, you need links between notes and a way to browse them.

Linking notes together

In Obsidian, link to another note with double brackets:

[[My Second Post]]

When you type [[, you will see a list of your notes. That is autocomplete doing its job.

For different display text, use a pipe:

[[My Second Post|click here to read more]]

To edit a link, arrow-key into the brackets, then type the | and your display text.

Rules:

  • The linked note must also be published (dg-publish: ✅). Unpublished links break on your site.
  • Do not worry about file paths. Just use the note name.
  • Link to specific sections with #: [[My Second Post#Conclusion]].

Enabling the sidebar

By default, visitors navigate through links in your notes. If you want a browsable list of all published notes:

  1. Open Digital Garden plugin settings in Obsidian (gear icon → Community plugins → Digital Garden).
  2. Click Manage note settings.
  3. Toggle Show filetree sidebar on.
  4. Click Save.

The sidebar only shows published notes. Private notes stay hidden.

To organize it, create folders in your Obsidian vault and move notes into them. The sidebar mirrors your folder structure.

Customization

Both Forestry.md and the Digital Garden plugin offer basic customization.

In Obsidian’s Digital Garden settings, click Manage appearance and change whatever you want. Start with the Sitename.

Build budget reminder: changing appearance settings triggers a rebuild. That is one of your 30 monthly builds. Plan your customization, then apply it all at once.

Optional: Get a Custom Domain

By default, you get your-garden.forestry.md. That works. If you want yourname.com, you have two options:

Option 1: Forestry.md Custom Domain (Expensive) Forestry.md charges $7/month for a custom domain. That is $84/year—more than most domain registrars charge for the domain itself. If you are fine paying that, they have a guide in your garden’s settings.

Option 2: Use the Beginner Guide (Recommended) If you want a custom domain without the markup, check out the Beginner Guide. It requires a bit more setup—more accounts, more clicking around—but uses Vercel for hosting instead. Vercel does not charge extra for custom domains—you just buy the domain from a registrar like Porkbun or Cloudflare for $10–$20/year and connect it. A bit more account setup and copy-pasting, but your wallet will thank you.

Note: Skip the domain entirely for now if you want. Your content is not going anywhere. You can always upgrade later.

Going Forward

That is it. You have a blog. Here is the workflow from now on:

  1. Open Obsidian.
  2. Write a note.
  3. Publish it with the Digital Garden plugin.
  4. That is it. There is no step 4.

Some notes:

  • You do not have to publish everything. Only explicitly flagged notes go live. Private notes stay private.
  • You can unpublish. Changed your mind? Remove the flag.
  • You can edit published notes. Update in Obsidian, publish again. Changes appear on your site.
  • Every edit costs a build. Remember: 30 builds per month. Draft in Obsidian, batch your changes, then publish once.
  • Back up your vault. Your notes live on your computer. If your machine dies, your notes die with it. Back up to iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, whatever. Just do not lose your work.

This is your garden. It is small, it is simple, and it is yours. When you are ready to own the land instead of renting it, come back for the intermediate guide.

Welcome to the club. Now go write something.

Want less restrictions and more control over your blog? Read: