# Dead Simple Blog Version 1.1 (2022-11-15) - [Installation](#installation) - [Usage](#usage) - [Changelog](#changelog) - [Other Versions](#other-versions) - [Attributions](#attributions) I've wanted for a long time to create a simple way of blogging that eschews basically all bells and whistles. Many "flat file" Content Management Systems exist already, as well as "static site generators", but none of these that I looked at were simple enough for my liking. I don't want to have to install Ruby, or Python, or Composer, or whatever else on a server to run a blog. On the other hand, installing WordPress or one of the other popular PHP-based CMSes for this use case is like hammering in a nail with a sledgehammer. Many people dislike PHP, and while it has its warts, I like it. I like using (vanilla) PHP simply because it is nearly ubiquitous. Having to install or configure it is often unnecessary because it is usually *already* installed, configured, and running. I wanted to use plain text files, but some formatting is nice -- Markdown was the obvious solution for this, since it offers quite a lot of options in terms of text formatting, without sacrificing the readability of the plain text itself. I was not keen on adding dependencies but I found [Parsedown](http://parsedown.org) which offers Markdown parsing by including a single PHP file. I can deal with that. That's really all there is to it -- dead simple PHP-based templating, and Markdown-formatted plain text content. I know I'm probably forgetting about a million edge cases, but I want to keep it simple. So, we'll roll with this for now and add features as they become necessary. ## Installation Download the files and upload them to a webserver somewhere. That's it! ## Usage 1. Duplicate `config-default.php` as `config-custom.php`, and change the config variables to your liking. 2. Create text files with a NUMERIC file name, I use YYYY-MM-DD date-based names (e.g. 2018-10-30.md). 3. Format text files with Markdown, or not. Whatever. ;) 4. If you need to link to image/video/audio/etc. files, you can upload them to the media folder. 4. Upload text files to the `content` directory. 5. You're done!! ## Changelog ### Version 1.1 - Updated Parsedown to 1.7.4 - Config has now been moved to `config-default.php`, added support for `config-custom.php` - Added dark mode! Adjust the `APPEARANCE` constant to enable - Change default file type to .md files instead of .txt. Adjust `FILE_EXT` constant if needed - Reorganize folder structure (CSS and fonts are now in `/src`) - Small text update to `/content/drafts/AboutDrafts.md` - Defined `$content` in global scope to avoid PHP errors in some configurations - Added default favicon at `/img/favicon.png` - Including `fonts.css` in `` instead of using @import for better caching behaviour - Added file hash query strings to `` tags in `` for better caching behaviour - `index.php` now uses `
` for content on list view and `
` on single post view - List view now explicitly sorts posts using `sortPosts()` function - default is sorting by filename, descending ## Other Versions User @shoaiyb has a fork going with additional features that I didn't think were "absolutely necessary" but if you want some extra bells and whistles, I recommend checking out [his fork](https://github.com/shoaiyb/dead-simple-blog). ## Attributions - [Parsedown](https://github.com/erusev/parsedown) by Emanuil Rusev - [Blog Icon](https://thenounproject.com/icon/blog-3557350/) by Gregor Cresnar from [Noun Project](https://thenounproject.com)