Pelican's newpost outputs to wrong location - makefile

Question

I'm following this guidance to Make markdown to Pelican blog posts. The guidance says make newpost NAME='testx' will output to ./content/pages, but my files are just going to ./content.
The script appears to use the PAGESDIR variable for output directory, initialised as: PAGESDIR=$(INPUTDIR)/pages where INPUTDIR is $(BASEDIR)/content.
The pages directory does exist in content, with permissions drwxr-xr-x (same as content).
Any idea why this isn't working in practice? This is my Makefile script:
PY?=python3
PELICAN?=pelican
PELICANOPTS=
EDITOR ?= atom
BASEDIR=$(CURDIR)
INPUTDIR=$(BASEDIR)/content
OUTPUTDIR=$(BASEDIR)/output
CONFFILE=$(BASEDIR)/pelicanconf.py
PUBLISHCONF=$(BASEDIR)/publishconf.py
FTP_HOST=localhost
FTP_USER=anonymous
FTP_TARGET_DIR=/
SSH_HOST=localhost
SSH_PORT=22
SSH_USER=root
SSH_TARGET_DIR=/var/www
S3_BUCKET=my_s3_bucket
CLOUDFILES_USERNAME=my_rackspace_username
CLOUDFILES_API_KEY=my_rackspace_api_key
CLOUDFILES_CONTAINER=my_cloudfiles_container
DROPBOX_DIR=~/Dropbox/Public/
GITHUB_PAGES_BRANCH=master
DEBUG ?= 0
ifeq ($(DEBUG), 1)
PELICANOPTS += -D
endif
RELATIVE ?= 0
ifeq ($(RELATIVE), 1)
PELICANOPTS += --relative-urls
endif
help:
#echo 'Makefile for a pelican Web site '
#echo ' '
#echo 'Usage: '
#echo ' make html (re)generate the web site '
#echo ' make clean remove the generated files '
#echo ' make regenerate regenerate files upon modification '
#echo ' make publish generate using production settings '
#echo ' make serve [PORT=8000] serve site at http://localhost:8000'
#echo ' make serve-global [SERVER=0.0.0.0] serve (as root) to $(SERVER):80 '
#echo ' make devserver [PORT=8000] start/restart develop_server.sh '
#echo ' make stopserver stop local server '
#echo ' make ssh_upload upload the web site via SSH '
#echo ' make rsync_upload upload the web site via rsync+ssh '
#echo ' make dropbox_upload upload the web site via Dropbox '
#echo ' make ftp_upload upload the web site via FTP '
#echo ' make s3_upload upload the web site via S3 '
#echo ' make cf_upload upload the web site via Cloud Files'
#echo ' make github upload the web site via gh-pages '
#echo ' '
#echo 'Set the DEBUG variable to 1 to enable debugging, e.g. make DEBUG=1 html '
#echo 'Set the RELATIVE variable to 1 to enable relative urls '
#echo ' '
html:
$(PELICAN) $(INPUTDIR) -o $(OUTPUTDIR) -s $(CONFFILE) $(PELICANOPTS)
clean:
[ ! -d $(OUTPUTDIR) ] || rm -rf $(OUTPUTDIR)
regenerate:
$(PELICAN) -r $(INPUTDIR) -o $(OUTPUTDIR) -s $(CONFFILE) $(PELICANOPTS)
serve:
ifdef PORT
cd $(OUTPUTDIR) && $(PY) -m pelican.server $(PORT)
else
cd $(OUTPUTDIR) && $(PY) -m pelican.server
endif
serve-global:
ifdef SERVER
cd $(OUTPUTDIR) && $(PY) -m pelican.server 80 $(SERVER)
else
cd $(OUTPUTDIR) && $(PY) -m pelican.server 80 0.0.0.0
endif
devserver:
ifdef PORT
$(BASEDIR)/develop_server.sh restart $(PORT)
else
$(BASEDIR)/develop_server.sh restart
endif
stopserver:
$(BASEDIR)/develop_server.sh stop
#echo 'Stopped Pelican and SimpleHTTPServer processes running in background.'
publish:
$(PELICAN) $(INPUTDIR) -o $(OUTPUTDIR) -s $(PUBLISHCONF) $(PELICANOPTS)
ssh_upload: publish
scp -P $(SSH_PORT) -r $(OUTPUTDIR)/* $(SSH_USER)#$(SSH_HOST):$(SSH_TARGET_DIR)
rsync_upload: publish
rsync -e "ssh -p $(SSH_PORT)" -P -rvzc --delete $(OUTPUTDIR)/ $(SSH_USER)#$(SSH_HOST):$(SSH_TARGET_DIR) --cvs-exclude
dropbox_upload: publish
cp -r $(OUTPUTDIR)/* $(DROPBOX_DIR)
ftp_upload: publish
lftp ftp://$(FTP_USER)#$(FTP_HOST) -e "mirror -R $(OUTPUTDIR) $(FTP_TARGET_DIR) ; quit"
s3_upload: publish
s3cmd sync $(OUTPUTDIR)/ s3://$(S3_BUCKET) --acl-public --delete-removed --guess-mime-type --no-mime-magic --no-preserve
cf_upload: publish
cd $(OUTPUTDIR) && swift -v -A https://auth.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0 -U $(CLOUDFILES_USERNAME) -K $(CLOUDFILES_API_KEY) upload -c $(CLOUDFILES_CONTAINER) .
github: publish
ghp-import -m "Generate Pelican site" -b $(GITHUB_PAGES_BRANCH) $(OUTPUTDIR)
git push origin $(GITHUB_PAGES_BRANCH)
.PHONY: html help clean regenerate serve serve-global devserver stopserver publish ssh_upload rsync_upload dropbox_upload ftp_upload s3_upload cf_upload github
## make newpost function
# https://github.com/getpelican/pelican/wiki/Tips-n-Tricks
PAGESDIR=$(INPUTDIR)/pages
DATE := $(shell date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
SLUG := $(shell echo '${NAME}' | sed -e 's/[^[:alnum:]]/-/g' | tr -s '-' | tr A-Z a-z)
EXT ?= md
newpost:
ifdef NAME
echo "Title: $(NAME)" > $(INPUTDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "Slug: $(SLUG)" >> $(INPUTDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "Date: $(DATE)" >> $(INPUTDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "" >> $(INPUTDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "" >> $(INPUTDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
${EDITOR} ${INPUTDIR}/${SLUG}.${EXT} &
else
#echo 'Variable NAME is not defined.'
#echo 'Do make newpost NAME='"'"'Post Name'"'"
endif
editpost:
ifdef NAME
${EDITOR} ${INPUTDIR}/${SLUG}.${EXT} &
else
#echo 'Variable NAME is not defined.'
#echo 'Do make editpost NAME='"'"'Post Name'"'"
endif
newpage:
ifdef NAME
echo "Title: $(NAME)" > $(PAGESDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "Slug: $(SLUG)" >> $(PAGESDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "" >> $(PAGESDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "" >> $(PAGESDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
${EDITOR} ${PAGESDIR}/${SLUG}.$(EXT)
else
#echo 'Variable NAME is not defined.'
#echo 'Do make newpage NAME='"'"'Page Name'"'"
endif
editpage:
ifdef NAME
${EDITOR} ${PAGESDIR}/${SLUG}.$(EXT)
else
#echo 'Variable NAME is not defined.'
#echo 'Do make editpage NAME='"'"'Page Name'"'"
endif

Answer 1

Just replace INPUTDIR with PAGESDIR in newpost recipe:
newpost:
ifdef NAME
echo "Title: $(NAME)" > $(PAGESDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "Slug: $(SLUG)" >> $(PAGESDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "Date: $(DATE)" >> $(PAGESDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "" >> $(PAGESDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
echo "" >> $(PAGESDIR)/$(SLUG).$(EXT)
${EDITOR} ${PAGESDIR}/${SLUG}.${EXT} &
else
#echo 'Variable NAME is not defined.'
#echo 'Do make newpost NAME='"'"'Post Name'"'"
endif