Ty Clifford
61 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
61 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
# Dead Simple Blog
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Version 1.1 (2022-11-15)
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- [Installation](#installation)
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- [Usage](#usage)
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- [Changelog](#changelog)
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- [Other Versions](#other-versions)
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- [Attributions](#attributions)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That's really all there is to it -- dead simple PHP-based templating, and Markdown-formatted plain text content.
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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.
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## Installation
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Download the files and upload them to a webserver somewhere. That's it!
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## Usage
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1. Duplicate `config-default.php` as `config-custom.php`, and change the config variables to your liking.
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2. Create text files with a NUMERIC file name, I use YYYY-MM-DD date-based names (e.g. 2018-10-30.md).
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3. Format text files with Markdown, or not. Whatever. ;)
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4. If you need to link to image/video/audio/etc. files, you can upload them to the media folder.
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4. Upload text files to the `content` directory.
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5. You're done!!
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## Changelog
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### Version 1.1
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- Updated Parsedown to 1.7.4
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- Config has now been moved to `config-default.php`, added support for `config-custom.php`
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- Added dark mode! Adjust the `APPEARANCE` constant to enable
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- Change default file type to .md files instead of .txt. Adjust `FILE_EXT` constant if needed
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- Reorganize folder structure (CSS and fonts are now in `/src`)
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- Small text update to `/content/drafts/AboutDrafts.md`
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- Defined `$content` in global scope to avoid PHP errors in some configurations
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- Added default favicon at `/img/favicon.png`
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- Including `fonts.css` in `<head>` instead of using @import for better caching behaviour
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- Added file hash query strings to `<link>` tags in `<head>` for better caching behaviour
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- `index.php` now uses `<main>` for content on list view and `<article>` on single post view
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- List view now explicitly sorts posts using `sortPosts()` function - default is sorting by filename, descending
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## Other Versions
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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).
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## Attributions
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- [Parsedown](https://github.com/erusev/parsedown) by Emanuil Rusev
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- [Blog Icon](https://thenounproject.com/icon/blog-3557350/) by Gregor Cresnar from [Noun Project](https://thenounproject.com)
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