A video about setting up Obsidian Publish is coming soon on the channel; for now you can read the article on how to set it up:
Turn your notes into a professional website in 15 minutes
What Obsidian Publish is and why you need it
Obsidian Publish is the official service for publishing your notes online. Think of it as a bridge between your private knowledge vault and a public space where this knowledge can benefit other people.
The core philosophy of Obsidian Publish is that the publishing process should be as simple as possible. You work in the familiar Obsidian interface, mark notes for publishing, and a few clicks later you get a full-fledged website that preserves all the links, the knowledge graph and Obsidian’s unique features.
The service is especially valuable for researchers, teachers, consultants and anyone who creates educational or expert content. Your site automatically gets a professional look, search capabilities and modern navigation without you having to learn web development.
The key advantages of Obsidian Publish
The first and main advantage is seamless integration with your existing Obsidian workflow. All the wiki-links, backlinks, tags and folder structure are transferred to the website automatically. You can keep working with your notes as usual, and the changes will be reflected on the site almost instantly.
The second advantage is preserving Obsidian’s unique features in a web format. The knowledge graph becomes interactive, letting visitors explore the connections between your ideas. Hover previews let you quickly look at the content of linked notes without leaving the current page.
The third advantage is technical reliability. Obsidian Publish runs on Cloudflare’s infrastructure, which provides high loading speed worldwide and stable operation. It’s worth noting that some users in certain regions may occasionally encounter quirks accessing Cloudflare services, but in most cases the sites work stably.
Step-by-step Obsidian Publish setup
Step 1: Preparation and subscription
Before you start the setup, make sure you have an active Obsidian Publish subscription. The service costs 10 with monthly payment.
You can take out a subscription via your account on the Obsidian site. After payment, the Publish plugin becomes available in Obsidian’s settings. It’s important to understand that the subscription is tied to your account, not a specific vault, so you can use Publish with different vaults.
Step 2: Activating the Publish plugin
Open Obsidian’s settings via the gear in the bottom-left corner or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Comma (Cmd+Comma on Mac). In the “Core plugins” section, find “Publish” and activate it. After activation, a new icon with a cloud and an up arrow appears in the left panel — this is your publishing control center.
On the plugin’s first launch, the system will prompt you to log into your Obsidian account. Use the same details you provided when registering and paying for the subscription. The authorisation process takes a few seconds and requires an internet connection.
Step 3: Creating a new site
Click the Publish icon in the left panel. If you don’t have any sites yet, the system will prompt you to create a new one. In the “Site ID” field, specify a unique identifier for your site. This will be part of your site’s URL in the format publish.obsidian.md/your-site-id.
Choose the Site ID thoughtfully, as it will be hard to change later. Good options: your name, the project’s name, the content’s theme. Avoid random characters and numbers — your URL should be easy to remember and look professional.
After creating the site, you’ll see the publishing-management interface with three main tabs: “NEW” (new notes to publish), “CHANGED” (modified notes) and “UNCHANGED” (already published notes).
Step 4: Publishing your first notes
To start, choose 3-5 of the best notes from your vault. These should be finished, quality materials that represent your thinking style and expertise well. In the “NEW” tab, check these notes and click “Publish”.
Obsidian will automatically analyse the selected notes and suggest adding related files — images, other notes that are linked. The “Add linked” function helps avoid broken links on your site. Carefully review the suggested files and uncheck the ones you don’t want to publish.
The publishing process takes from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the number and size of the files. After it completes, you’ll see a notification of successful publishing and a link to your new site.
Configuring the site’s settings
Accessing the site’s settings
To get to the site’s settings, open the Publish plugin and click the gear icon to the right of your site’s name. The “Site options” window will open with many parameters that affect the look and functionality of your site.
The settings are divided into logical groups: General, Appearance, Reading experience and Components. Each group is responsible for a particular aspect of your site, and understanding this division will help you find the options you need faster.
General settings
Site Name is the public name of your site, which will be shown in the browser title and on the site itself. Choose a name that clearly reflects the theme or your personality. For example, “Notes on productivity” or “Anna Ivanova’s Digital Garden”.
Homepage File determines which note opens when someone enters the site. Create a special welcome note with a brief description of yourself, navigation by the main topics and a few of your best materials. This page is the face of your site, so give it special attention.
Logo lets you add a logo image to the site’s header. The logo must first be uploaded to your Obsidian vault and published as a regular file. The recommended size is 200x60 pixels in PNG or SVG format for sharpness on all devices.
Appearance settings
Theme offers three options: Light, Dark and Adapt to System (adapting to the user’s system settings). Choosing a theme isn’t just a matter of aesthetics, but also of reading comfort. The dark theme reduces eye strain when reading in the dark, but may be less suitable for documents with charts and diagrams.
Light/Dark Toggle adds a theme-switch button to the site’s interface, letting visitors choose the mode that suits them. This feature is especially useful if your audience reads materials at different times of day.
Reading experience settings
Show hover preview enables pop-up previews when you hover over internal links. This is one of Obsidian Publish’s most powerful features, letting readers quickly look at related content without going to another page. The feature is especially useful for sites with a lot of interconnected notes.
Hide page title hides the note’s title at the top of the page. Use this option if you prefer a more minimalist design or if the note titles are integrated into the text itself.
Readable line length limits the text width to improve readability. Lines that are too long tire the eyes, so this option is recommended for sites with large text blocks.
Strict line breaks affects the display of line breaks in Markdown. With the option on, single breaks will be shown as line breaks, which can be useful for poetry or structured lists.
Stack Pages enables “page stacking” mode, where several notes can be open at once as tabs. This feature is useful for comparing materials or working with several related topics.
Components settings
Show navigation adds a file explorer to the site’s left panel, letting visitors see the structure of your notes and quickly move between sections. Navigation is especially important for large sites with many sections.
Customize navigation lets you change the display order of files and folders in the navigation. You can rearrange items by dragging and hide certain files or folders from visitors.
Show search bar adds a search bar that searches through all the content of your published notes. The search works in real time and highlights the found terms in the results.
Show graph view enables the interactive knowledge graph in the right panel. The graph shows the connections between your notes and lets visitors explore your ideas in a non-linear way. This is one of Obsidian Publish’s unique features.
Show table of contents automatically generates a table of contents for each note based on the H1-H6 headings. The table of contents helps readers navigate long materials and quickly jump to the sections they’re interested in.
Show backlinks displays a list of the notes that link to the current page. This helps you understand the note’s context and find related materials.
Advanced tips and optimisation
Organising content for publishing
Effective content organisation starts in Obsidian itself. Create a special _public folder for notes intended for publishing. This approach helps clearly separate private reflections from public content.
Use a tag system to categorise public content. For example, the tags #article, #note, #resource will help visitors find the type of material they need faster. In Obsidian Publish, tags automatically become clickable and create extra navigation paths.
Create MOC (Maps of Content) notes — index pages for each of your site’s main topics. A MOC helps structure large amounts of content and serves as an entry point for new readers. For example, a “Productivity” MOC might contain links to all your notes on time management, habits and organising your workspace.
Optimising images and media files
Obsidian Publish has limits on file size and total content volume, so optimising media files is critically important. Compress images before adding them to the vault, using services like TinyPNG or ImageOptim.
Recommended image formats: WebP for modern browsers, PNG for images with transparency, JPEG for photos. The maximum image width for the web is usually 1200 pixels — that’s enough for sharp display on most devices.
For diagrams and schemes, consider using the vector SVG format. SVG files scale without loss of quality and usually have a smaller size than raster images of the same complexity.
Using note properties
Note properties in Obsidian (formerly called frontmatter) provide powerful options for controlling publishing. At the start of each note you can add a YAML block with metadata:
---
title: "An SEO-optimised title"
description: "A short description for search engines"
tags: [productivity, planning]
publish: true
permalink: custom-url-slug
cover: "path/to/cover-image.jpg"
---The publish: true property can be used to automatically include the note in the list for publishing. This is especially useful when working with a lot of content.
The permalink property lets you create a nice URL for the note instead of the one automatically generated from the file name. This matters for SEO and the memorability of links.
Setting up a custom domain
For a professional look, consider connecting your own domain to your Obsidian Publish site. In the site’s settings, find the “Custom Domain” section and follow the instructions for setting up DNS records.
When setting up a custom domain, make sure your domain registrar supports CNAME records. Most popular registrars (Namecheap, GoDaddy, Cloudflare) provide a simple interface for managing DNS.
After setting up the domain, the changes may take 24 to 48 hours to fully propagate across the internet. During this time your site may be accessible at both the old and the new address.
SEO optimisation of content
Obsidian Publish automatically generates many SEO-important elements, but you can improve them. Use descriptive note titles that include the keywords you want to be found by.
In the note properties, add a description with a short but informative description of the content. This description will be used by search engines and when sharing on social media.
Create internal links between related notes. Good internal linking not only helps readers find relevant content, but also improves the site’s position in search engines.
Automating the publishing process
For regularly updated sites, create a routine of weekly checking for new materials to publish. Set a reminder to look through the folder of public content once a week and update the site.
Use publishing filters to automatically exclude certain folders or file types. In the Publish settings, you can specify folders that should never be published, even if they contain notes with the publish: true flag.
Keep a separate change-log note, where you record what you published and when. This will help you track the site’s development and plan future content.
Solving common problems
Problems with displaying links
If internal links don’t work correctly, check that all the linked notes are also published. Obsidian Publish can’t display a link to an unpublished note.
For links to external resources, use full URLs with the protocol (https://). Relative links may work incorrectly in a web environment.
If a note was renamed after publishing, the old links may break. Re-publish all the linked notes to update the links.
Problems with images
Make sure all the images are also added to the list for publishing. Images aren’t published automatically along with the notes — they need to be marked separately.
Check that the image paths in the notes match their location in the vault. Use relative paths from the root of the vault.
If images don’t display, try re-publishing them forcibly, unchecking and checking the box again.
Site availability questions
In rare cases, users may encounter temporary difficulties accessing sites on the publish.obsidian.md platform. This may be related to the quirks of Cloudflare’s CDN in certain regions or with specific internet providers.
If you notice such problems, consider setting up a custom domain with additional DNS providers or contact Obsidian support for recommendations on your specific situation.
For critically important content, it’s useful to have a backup publishing plan via alternative platforms.
Size and performance limitations
Obsidian Publish has limits on the total site size and the number of files. Regularly check your quota usage in the site’s settings.
To optimise the performance of a large site, consider archiving old content. You can create a separate archive site for historical materials.
Avoid publishing very large files (videos, bulky PDFs). For such materials it’s better to use external storage services and insert links.
Integration with analytics and monitoring
Setting up Google Analytics
To track visits, connect Google Analytics to your Obsidian Publish site. This option is only available when using a custom domain.
Create a new property in Google Analytics 4, get the tracking code and add it to the site’s settings in the “Google Analytics tracking code” section. The code has the format G-XXXXXXXXXX.
After connecting analytics, you’ll be able to track the number of visitors, popular pages, traffic sources and user behaviour on the site.
Performance monitoring
Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check your site’s loading speed. Obsidian Publish is optimised for fast operation, but large images or a complex structure can slow down loading.
Regularly check that all the links on the site work. Broken internal links worsen the user experience and affect SEO.
Track feedback from readers via comments on social media or direct messages. This will help you spot problems that aren’t visible in the analytics.
Conclusion and recommendations
Obsidian Publish is a powerful tool for publishing personal knowledge that combines ease of use with professional capabilities. The platform’s main advantage is the ability to focus on creating content, rather than on the technical aspects of web development.
Start simple: publish a few of your best notes, configure the basic site settings and gradually add new content. Don’t try to transfer your whole vault at once — it’s better to create a small but quality site than a large but unstructured one.
Remember that the success of a digital garden is measured not by the number of notes, but by their usefulness to readers and your own development as an author. Use feedback from your audience to improve existing content and create new materials.
Obsidian Publish is an investment in the long-term development of your ideas and professional reputation. When used properly, it can become a powerful tool for sharing knowledge and building a community around your interests.
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