Our Gemini Collaboration: A Deep Dive into Building a Better Blog

What happens when a person and a powerful AI work together? This post tells the story of how I worked with the Gemini CLI to build and improve this blog. It was a great example of how AI can help with everything from writing new posts to fixing difficult technical problems.

🚀 Phase 1: Understanding the Blog’s Foundation

Our work started with a simple request: “analyze the code.” Gemini did a deep dive into my project to understand how it was built.

  1. Looking at the Settings: First, it looked at the config.yaml file and figured out that my blog was built with a tool called Hugo and a design called PaperMod.
  2. Understanding the Content: Next, it looked at my blog posts and read one of them. This helped it understand my writing style.
  3. How the Blog Gets Published: Finally, it looked at a file that showed how my blog gets automatically published to the internet.

With this information, we were ready to start making improvements.

✍️ Phase 2: Writing New Posts and Fixing a Big SEO Problem

Gemini helped me write a new post about a popular topic: AI Agents. It wrote a full draft that was ready to be published.

But writing new posts is only half the battle. I told Gemini that my posts weren’t showing up on Google. This started a fun problem-solving process.

  • Checking the robots.txt File: Gemini first looked at a file called robots.txt. This file tells Google which pages it can and can’t look at.
  • Checking the Build Settings: Gemini checked to make sure my blog was being built correctly for the internet. It was.
  • Finding the Real Problem: After checking everything on my website, Gemini figured out that the problem was probably that Google just hadn’t gotten around to looking at my new website yet. It told me that the best way to fix this was to sign up for Google Search Console and tell Google about my website directly. This is a very important step for any new website.

🔧 Phase 3: Fixing More Technical Problems

With the Google problem solved, we moved on to two more challenges.

Fixing Google Analytics

I had turned on Google Analytics (a tool that tells you how many people are visiting your website), but it wasn’t working. Here’s how we fixed it:

  1. Finding the Missing Piece: Gemini looked through the theme’s files and found that it was trying to use a file called google_analytics.html, but the file was missing.
  2. Creating the Missing File: The theme had a place for the Google Analytics code, but it didn’t include the code itself. This is so that users can add their own code.
  3. The Solution: Gemini created the missing file and added the correct Google Analytics code to it. After that, my analytics started working.

Turning on Comments

The last problem was turning on the comments section. The process was very similar to fixing the analytics.

  1. Another Missing File: I had turned on comments in my settings, but they weren’t showing up. Gemini found that the theme was using a placeholder file for the comments.
  2. Creating the Real File: The solution was to create a new file with the code for the comments. Gemini created the file and added the code for Giscus, a great commenting system that uses GitHub.
  3. Setting it Up: Gemini also added the Giscus settings to my main settings file and told me what information I needed to add to make it work.

✨ Conclusion: A Real Partner

This whole experience showed me that an AI can be more than just a tool that writes code. It can be a real partner that helps you solve difficult problems. It understood how my blog was built, helped me fix problems, and helped me add new features.

The age of the AI assistant is here, and it’s a great time to be a developer.

The Gemini Journals Series

  1. A Day with Gemini: From Code to Content
  2. From Lovable Dev to Gemini CLI: A Developer’s Journey
  3. The Gemini CLI Sandbox: A Secure Environment for AI-Powered Development
  4. Dynamic SEO Schemas with Gemini Journals
  5. My Lovable AI Experience: A Journey of Collaboration
  6. Our Gemini Collaboration: A Deep Dive (This Post)
  7. Our Gemini Collaboration: Solving the Missing Cover Image
  8. Gemini CLI in the Cloud: Secure and Isolated Development with Codespaces/Gitpod