What is Obsidian is actually what to know about Obsidian before starting. Here we actually start with an empty Obsidian vault.
You may also download this pre-made template vault and skip all the setting work: Bilinear-vault
Stages in Eruption
An how-to for the Obsidian ecosystem with a 🌋 volcano theme.1
- The Quakes - the very basics for starting hour
- The Emissions - the important information for starting week
- The Venting - Knowledge Management Techniques, Integration with other Editors, Folders and Tags best uses
- The Buildup - technical aspects of note taking and managing - Diagrams, Equations
- The Collapse - applied aspects of note making and managing - Task Management, Zotero Integration and Citation management
- The Explosion - spider webbing a large vault
- The Growth and failures - growing into a galactic civilization
- The Ash and Lava - sharing the vault to public
- Back to Dormant - further development in ecosystem and workflow
🛑 DON’T PANIC
Info
- Reader is requested to only read The Quakes part on day 1 of using Obsidian.
- Reader may use CTRL+Scroll to increase or decrease the font size of the text.
The Quakes
the very first of the first stuff
The reader is advised to
- Open a blank vault and make a note
- Readout the official help pages alongside this section.
- Create a blank note.
- Writing note on Obsidian uses two modes, Preview and Edit. It can be toggled from top right button.
The first Hotkeys to learn:
CTRL+E- Switch from Preview to edit modeCTRL+P- Open command palette, to search for various operations to doCTRL+O- Quickly open some note or create a new one
Markdown Syntax (unofficially) Obsidian flavored
Writing in Obsidian uses basic Markdown syntax.
// Links and Embeds- link to a note:
[[note]]- embed:
![[note]]
- embed:
- link to a heading:
[[note#heading|heading]]- embed:
[[note#heading|heading]]
- embed:
- link to a block (specific line) try:
[[note#^- embed:
![[note#^
- embed:
- link to a picture:
![[pic.png]] - link to a pdf:
[[file.pdf]]- embed:
![[file.pdf]]
- embed:
- link to a specific page of a pdf:
[[file.pdf#page5|page=5]]- embed:
![[file.pdf#page5|page=5]]
- embed:
- link to a file:
[[file.extension]]
// Text Styles
**bold**
*italic* _italic_
~~strikethrough~~
> quotes
// Lists and tasks
- Unordered list (Hotkey: CTRL+ENTER)
1. Ordered list
- [ ] Task (Hotkey: CTRL+ENTER twice)
// Headings
# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3
#### Heading 4
##### Heading 5
###### Heading 6
// Callouts
> [!important]
>
> This is important.More here: Format your notes - Obsidian Help.
Necessary Settings
CTRL+, or click on Settings icon at bottom right to open settings.
There would be a list of OPTIONS to open from:
The default settings works fine mostly, the things that advised to change and to be informed about are:
- Editor
Warning
Do not turn on Vim key bindings if you are unfamiliar with Vim editor.
- Files & Links
- Appearance
- Choose a theme made by the community:
- Hotkeys
- Choose a “Hotkey” configuration for the commands.
- About
- Keep Automatic updates turned on.
- Make sure to reinstall Obsidian of the installer version becomes too old.
- Turn on Receive insider builds if user is on Obsidian Catalyst.
- Account
- No account required if Obsidian Sync, Publish or Receive insider builds are not desired
Core plugins
Most plugins appear in the little left menu. They have a separate settings options list:
- Tags - Use
#tagsto group notes based on any label. The tag pane arrives at the right pane. Drag to any preferable spot. - Page Preview - Hover over links to preview note.
- Starred - Make a list of notes that are “Starred”
- Markdown format importer - Turn off if reader is not a Roam or Bear user
- Daily notes
- Templates
- Unique note cretaor - Can be used as an ‘Inbox’ of notes
- Random note - Opens a random note
- Outline - Open a “ouline” from all
#headers from Note options at top right triple dots. - Slides - Use a note to start a full screen presentation
- Audio recorder - Record audio
- Workspace - Save the current configuration of notes as “Workspace”
- File recovery - File versioning and recovery for notes
- Publish and Sync - Paid Obsidian.md features
The Emissions
the information for the first week into Obsidian
- Using the mobile app
- Sync and Backup
In-built features
- Templates
- Daily Notes
Linking and Styling of Notes
- Tables
- LaTeX
- Callouts
Community Plugins
🗂️ 02.01 Plugins by Category - Obsidian Hub - Obsidian Publish
First few plugins to check out:
- Calendar plugin
- Sliding panes plugin
The Venting
Vault Management Techniques, Other Editors, Folders, Tags
Vault Structure
- Folders
- Tags
- Hierarchies
Markdown Manipulation and more
- Zettlr
- Pandoc -
- VScode -
- LogSeq
Vault Management
External Applications
- Xjournal++
- Calendar app
- Mail app
- Live Weather
- Dendron
- Zotero
- VCcode
The Buildup
technical aspects of note taking and managing_
- Search
- Metadata and Query
- Diagrams
- Equations
- also check the full on LaTeX implementation
- Images
- Web bookmarking
- Raindrop
- Markdownload
- Tab copy
- Videos
- Podcasts
The Collapse
applied aspects of note making and managing
- Zotero Integration
- Active Recall and Spaced Repetitio
- Task Management
The Explosion
spider webbing a large vault
- Graph View
Idea Emergence
- LYT Kit
- The kit suggests readers to have at least 100 notes.
The Growth and failures
growing into a galactic civilization
File recovery
The Ash and Lava
sharing the vault to public
- Obsidian Publish
- GitHub Pages
- Tweets
Back to Dormant
further development in ecosystem and workflow
- Tinkering with superplugins
- Dendron
- full-on LaTex
- For more rigorous use of mathematical notation and equations, chemical structures and equations, diagrams, we must use the industry standard - LaTex. Various Tex utility software like TexStudio, services, or even Vim can be used to create LaTex documents but for the purpose of keeping a familiar aspect to a unfamiliar wold, we shall use VScode to write LaTex documents and integrate with Obsidian.
Footnotes
-
The names of major levels inspired from the TL;DR of the article https://sciencing.com/stages-volcano-eruption-8549867.html ↩