tohya.net saturnexplorers

IceBlog

Blog engine built with ruby on rails.

UNMAINTAINED as I now use zarchitect to build static sites.

Features

  • file uploads
  • microposts, blog posts and project pages (that can be used like a simple cms)
  • sticky messages
  • blog posts, projects and sticky messages are written in markdown with an extended syntax for including media files
  • comments
  • mail reminders for unpublished content
  • lets you post to a mastodon instance
  • largely built with themability in mind

Setup

This app has been tested against ruby 2.3.5.

It requires mysql/mariadb and imagemagick on the server.

The process expects the following environment variables:

  • DATABASE_NAME
  • DATABASE_USER
  • DATABASE_HOST
  • DATABASE_PSWD
  • DATABASE_HOST
  • SECRETKEYBASE
  • TRIP_SALT
  • MSTDN_URL
  • MSTDN_USERNAME
  • MSTDNACCESSTOKEN

Mail settings are configured in config/environments/production.rb. Refer to the Action Mailer guide for details. Also set the from address in app/mailers/application_mailer.rb

Various variables can be set in config/initializers/app_config.rb.

Once everything is setup, run

rails db:create rails db:migrate rails assets:precomile rails console

User.Create(name: '', email: '', password: '', admin: true, activated: true)

bundle exec whenever --update-crontab

with the needed environment variables set. The console command is required to set an admin user.

Usage

Visit root/login to login as the created user.

Settings (or admin user data) * Name * Email * Forum URL: an optional value. Supported by default theme, if set another menu button shows up with a link to the specified url * Theme: name of the default theme * Skin: name of the default skin. If these aren't set the defaults are the first theme and skin in the config arrays * Blog post toot visibility: public, private, unlisted, direct * Avatar * Site Icon: an item to be shown next to the site name * Site Banner: a banner to be displayed between title and menu * "Post to mastodo?": whether posting microposts and publishing blog posts create statuses on mastodon * "Allow comments?": whether people can post comments * "Use blogspam.net checking?": use the blogspam API y/n * About: short bio, shows up in the user profile * Bio draft: long bio, only shows up in the dedicated profile page. uses markdown * Site name: The name that's displayed in the top left * Site slogan: string that's displayed right next to the title * Meta keywords: keywords for the HTML meta tag * Meta desc: description for the HTML meta tag

markdown is also supported by all projects, blog posts and sticky messages. To insert a piece of media put the following syntax between paragraphs:

MEDIA:img_full:{id}:"{caption}" MEDIA:img:{id}:"{caption}":{max_width} MEDIA:video:{id}:"{caption}" MEDIA:audio:{id}:"{caption}" MEDIA:yt:{id}:"{caption}"

The ids refer to the ids of various files you can upload. Caption is the text to appear below a media item. The last example is for embedding youtube videos - in which case the id refers to the id part of the video's url. Some examples:

MEDIA:video:45:"" MEDIA:img_full:2:"Nice picture." MEDIA:img:2|14|5:"pic1|pic2|pic3":400px MEDIA:img:5|22|2:"||":60%

img is the only type to support multiple items. The number of pipes in the id section and the caption section needs to be the same. max-width is optional and defaults to 100%.

Source code available here

License

IceBlog is released under the MIT license.