Deploying a Full-Featured Blog on Medium with Python and Flask

Introduction

In today’s digital landscape, having a professional online presence is crucial for individuals and businesses alike. One effective way to achieve this is by creating a blog that showcases expertise and provides value to the audience. In this article, we’ll explore how to deploy a full-featured blog on Medium using Python and Flask.

Choosing the Right Platform

Medium is an excellent platform for bloggers due to its ease of use, built-in audience, and minimalistic design. However, it does have limitations when it comes to customization and control over content. This is where Python and Flask come into play – they provide a flexible and scalable solution for creating a full-featured blog.

Setting Up the Environment

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of building our blog, let’s set up the environment. We’ll need to install Python, pip, and Flask. For this example, we’ll use Python 3.8 and Flask 2.0.

# Install required packages
pip install flask

Creating the Blog Structure

Our blog will consist of several key components, including a homepage, about page, contact page, and a list of published articles. We’ll also create a custom template for our blog.

Blog Template

We’ll be using Flask’s built-in templating engine, Jinja2, to render our templates. First, let’s create the base layout template:

<!-- base.html -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>{{ title }}</title>
</head>
<body>
    <header>
        <nav>
            <ul>
                {% if url == "/" %}
                    <li><a href="{% url 'home' %}">Home</a></li>
                {% else %}
                    <li><a href="{% url 'home' %}">Home</a></li>
                {% endif %}
                {% if url == "/about" %}
                    <li><a href="{% url 'about' %}">About</a></li>
                {% else %}
                    <li><a href="{% url 'about' %}">About</a></li>
                {% endif %}
            </ul>
        </nav>
    </header>
    <main>
        {{ content }}
    </main>
</body>
</html>

Home Route

Next, let’s create the home route that will render our base layout template:

# app.py
from flask import Flask, render_template

app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route([
    "home",
   ()
])
def home():
    return render_template("base.html", title="Home")

About Route

Similarly, let’s create the about route that will render our base layout template:

@app.route([
    "about",
   ()
])
def about():
    return render_template("base.html", title="About")

Contact Route

And finally, let’s create the contact route that will render our base layout template:

@app.route([
    "contact",
   ()
])
def contact():
    return render_template("base.html", title="Contact")

Publishing Articles

Once we have our blog structure in place, we can start publishing articles. We’ll use Flask’s built-in support for static files to serve our articles.

Publishing an Article

Let’s create a new route that will handle the publication of articles:

@app.route([
    "article/<slug>",
   ()
])
def article(slug):
    return render_template("base.html", title="Article", content=article_content)

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve explored how to deploy a full-featured blog on Medium using Python and Flask. We’ve covered setting up the environment, creating the blog structure, and publishing articles. With these tools and techniques, you can create a professional online presence that showcases your expertise and provides value to your audience.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started with building your own full-featured blog today!

Effortless Medium Blog Deployment via Python & Flask