Adding code snippets to your blog

Adding code snippets to your blog

When writing technical articles about programming, one needs to add code snippets for reference from time to time. The following post highlights two methods I find both simple and easy to use. 

hilite.me converts your code snippets into pretty-printed HTML format, easily embeddable into blog posts, emails and websites.

Just copy the source code to the left pane, select the language and the color scheme, and click "Highlight!". The HTML from the right pane can now be pasted to your blog or email, no external CSS or Javascript files are required.

Github Gist

Think of a Gist as a single source controlled file that can be edited, cloned and shared easily. This is one of my favorite options for sharing small code snippets. It has the added advantage of being version controlled as well.

Instructions

1- Click on gist.github.com
2- If you have a github account (which you should) sign in. Start by adding a file name for your gist; the syntax highlighting will automatically be detected by the extension:

3- Make sure to create the gist as "public". Once you do so, you'll see a "embed this gist" link ont he left hand side in the following format:
<script src="https://gist.github.com/<user_id>/<gist_id>.js"/>

4- Copy that and embed it in your blog. Here is an example with some ruby code: