diff --git a/config.sh b/config.sh
index 5229d9c..9c3f777 100644
--- a/config.sh
+++ b/config.sh
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@ lastupdated="true"
 site_title="koutsie's telenotes"
 site_description="thoughts about mainly computers... maybe recipes and cats too?"
 site_link="https://k0.tel/"
+publish_dir="."
 
 # Put CSS between <<EOF and EOF
 site_css=$(cat <<EOF
diff --git a/noter.sh b/noter.sh
index ec6a4bd..92b9de6 100755
--- a/noter.sh
+++ b/noter.sh
@@ -133,8 +133,16 @@ generate_rss_feed() {
 # godspeed notecount...
 notecount=$(find notes -name "*.txt" ! -empty | wc -l)
 
+if [[ ! -e $publish_dir ]]; then
+    mkdir $publish_dir
+elif [[ ! -d $publish_dir ]]; then
+    echo "$dir already exists but is not a directory" 1>&2
+    exit
+fi
+
+
 # Create HTML file
-output_file="index.html"
+output_file="$publish_dir/index.html"
 echo "<!DOCTYPE html>
 <html>
 <head>
