"This Blog" is a blogging engine made for people that like markdown and the command line. It's a single-user, no database application written in node.js.
- Simple publishing mechanism - use a single command
- No database or static file servers - all data is kept in files
- Blog posts are single files and contain their own configuration
- Can handle multiple languages
- Can tag posts and dynamically build tag categories
- Posts can have their own templates or use the provided master
Note: Since This Blog depends on connect >= 2.0.0 and that version still isn't published to NPM, the npm install will fail. Please checkout this git repository, cd into it and use npm to manually install the dependencies. You can checkout connect 2.0.0alpha elswhere and then link it into the node_modules directory.
To use it, you will have to make 2 installations, one on your server and one on your local machine:
npm install this-blog
Before you start it, you need to edit the settings.json file in the root directory. Your local and remote installation must have the same settings for these options:
remoteUrl: "example.com"
remotePort: 80
password: "icanhazcheezburger"
contentDirs: ["posts", "templates", "static"]
You need to get these to be the same on your server and local installation. Everything else is configurable later. The remoteUrl and remotePort are the public URL and port of your blog. The password is used to authenticate you when you publish posts.
You can start your server by running
node blog.js -s
on your server.
To upload posts, images and templates start adding them in one of the contentDirs that you defined. Normally your posts would go in the posts directory, templates in the templates directory, but This Blog uses only the file extension to make difference between posts and other files. Any file with the .md extension will be treated like a post.
After you're done publish your changes by running
node blog.js -p
on your local machine.
Here's an overview of the configuration options in the settings.json file:
port: The port for the node server to listen to (if you use a proxy)
remotePort: The public port for your blog (should be 80)
remoteUrl: The public URL of your blog
password: Authentication password - needs to be the same
contentDirs: Dirs scanned for content changes before publishing
gaCode: Google analytics key
postsUrl: Url path for posts (with leading slash)
tagsUrl: Url path for tags (with leading slash)
adminUrl: Url path for publishing (passworded, with leading slash)
errorLog: Error log filename
maxExcerpts: Maximum number of posts shown on a tag/home page
pagination: Maximum number of pagination links
languages: List of languages - ["en", "mk"]
langinfo: Hash of language names - {"en": "English", "mk": "Македонски"}
sitemenus: List of menus that posts can appear in - ["bookmarks", "2011"]
strings: A hash of stranslation strings for each language
Apart from the settings.json file, you can also configure your posts individually by using headers. A post filename should look like this:
This is my first post.en.md
It has to have the md extension for it to be treated like a post. The ".en" part tells This Blog the language of the post. If it's ommitted, the first language in your languages settings will be used. To have the same post on another language, just do this:
This is my first post.en.md # English Version
This is my first post.mk.md # Macedonian Version
Posts are further configured by using headers. All posts must start with a set of HTTP-like headers. Headers must be the first thing in the post file and are over when the first instance of 2 consecutive newlines is found
Here's an example post file:
Language: en # This is found in the filename
Title: My First Post # This appears as the title (<h1>)
Date: 2011-12-19 # Must be a date in the ISO format
Description: Nothing special # META description
Menus: Bookmarks # One of the menus in which it appears
Tags: Blog, Node.js # Post tags
Notice the 2 new lines. This is the beginning of the post. We ommit the
title because it will be automatically added for us from the headers.
This part is the post excerpt. Notice the 5 dashes in-between double
linebreaks (\n\n-----\n\n). That's the excerpt delimiter. Everything before
those dashes will appear in the list on the homepage/tag pages. If you
ommit those dashes, the whole post will appear on the homepage along with
other posts.
-----
This is the continuation of the post. This will be visible only on the
post page.
This blog is lincensed under the MIT license.
- Add an option to exclude a post from being listed on the homepage.
