Blogixx - a markdown Flat File Blog System

2016-05-07 00:00:00 IN1 , 2023-04-10 14:16:29 IN1

Blogixx is a markdown file Blog Module for myMVC. It is a so called "flat file blog system", which means there is no database required. Setup is easy and does not take long.

Flat File Blog System Post Overview "Flat File Blog System Post Overview"

If you want your own Blog which comes easy to understand and does not require to setup any database, Blogixx may be a choice for you. This Post is adapted from my README.md at github, where the Sources of Blogixx are hosted.

Features

no Database required
fast, secure and easy to understand
automatic Indexing of new Posts, Pages
automatic Post Overview - purified with HTMLPurifier to avoid broken HTML
using Parsedown to convert Markdown into HTML
automatic Tag list
automatic Date list
automatic meta tags: keyword, description
Full text Search with Pulldown/Suggest Field included, no need to update any Index for this
easily add a new Post as a markdown file
easily add a new Page as a markdown file
HTML5 Bootstrap Frontend with Bootswatch Design

Requirements

Linux OS
Permission to execute these Linux binaries via PHP's shell_exec command: ls, find, grep, head, md5sum
PHP >=5.4
myMVC - will be installed automatically when following the Installation Instruction here on this page.

For Production live Environments i strongly recommend a Webserver like Apache2. For develop or test you could easily run PHP's internal server (see Section Run here).

Installation

This will install myMVC + Blogixx Module in one Step for a develop Environment (PHP >= 5.4 is required).

$ export MVC_ENV="develop"; svn co https://github.com/gueff/myMVC.git/trunk/ myMVC; cd myMVC/public; php index.php; cd ../modules; svn co https://github.com/gueff/Blogixx.git/trunk/ Blogixx; cd Blogixx; ./install.sh;

Run

cd to myMVC's public/ folder and run php's internal server:

$ export MVC_ENV="develop"; php -S 127.0.0.1:1969;

open Browser and call http://127.0.0.1:1969

you could also "simulate" test and live environments, by just set the specific value. E.g: export MVC_ENV="test";php -S 127.0.0.1:1969;, and export MVC_ENV="live";php -S 127.0.0.1:1969;

For a live/production environment i strongly recommended to use Apache2 Webserver and a Domain pointing to that. Using Apache2 Webserver will allow you to make use the .htaccess file located in /trunk/public/.htaccess. In there, you easily can set the environment variable. But of course, you also can make use of Nginx. See myMVC 's documentation for more Info.

Creating Content

The easiest Way is to use the Backend. Therefore you need to set up a user and password once:

After you installed Blogixx successfully, open /trunk/config/Blogixx.php and create an account for login.

Example

Creating an Account for Environment develop with user=test and password=test:

// Backend User Accounts for different Environments set by MVC_ENV
// Notice: empty "user" or "password" means no login is possible
$aConfig['BLOG_BACKEND'] = array(

    'develop' => array(

        // 1. account
        array(
            'user'      => 'test', 
            'password'  => 'test'
        )
    ),

    'test' => array(

        // 1. account
        array(
            'user'      => '', 
            'password'  => ''
        )
    ),

    'live' => array(

        // 1. account
        array(
            'user'      => '', 
            'password'  => ''
        )   
    )
);

Just login by calling /@ and create a post or page.

Manually (optional)

Maybe you want to edit your Blog locally and rsync it to your Production live Server, or you just want to use the markdown editor of your choice (like ReText) locally, then the following way may be one for you.

Write a Post

Posts must have a leading ISO Date in the filename and a .md Suffix at the end.

cd to /trunk/modules/Blogixx/data/post/
create a new file with the Syntax YYYY-MM-DD.title.md.

Examples:

2016-04-16.Linux: how to use iptables.md
2015-06-19.How to do this and that.md

Don't worry about spaces, colons and double-colons in the filename. It will work.

Now you can edit this file writing Markdown Syntax

Create a Page

cd to /trunk/modules/Blogixx/data/page/ and create a new file. The filename should represent the title of the new Page.

$ cd /trunk/modules/Blogixx/data/page/
$ touch "Contact.md"

Now you can edit this file writing Markdown Syntax

Templating / Design

Smarty Template Engine

As myMVC makes use of the Smarty Template Engine, so -of course- does Blogixx.

See /trunk/modules/Blogixx/templates/ for the Smarty template files which will be used for Blogixx.

Frontend

For the Frontend, Blogixx further makes use of

Bootstrap
Bootswatch (HTML5 Boostrap Designs)
Font Awesome
jQuery
highlight.js

So Blogixx makes use of Bootswatch, where its Design cerulean here is set as the default one. But you can easily switch to another Bootswatch Design by changing in /modules/Blogixx/templates/layout/index.tpl:

For example, you can change cerulean

<link rel="stylesheet" href="//maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootswatch/3.3.6/cerulean/bootstrap.min.css">

into united:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="//maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootswatch/3.3.6/united/bootstrap.min.css">

See Bootswatch for available Bootswatch Designs.

See Folder /public/Blogixx/ for CSS and Scripts

Blogixx Screenshots

Flat File Blog System Tag Result "Flat File Blog System Tag Result" Flat File Blog System Date Result "Flat File Blog System Date Result" Flat File Blog System Backend Login "Flat File Blog System Backend Login" Flat File Blog System Frontend Overview "Flat File Blog System Frontend Overview"