simple-website-with-blog

A simple website with a blog

simple-website-with-blog is a simple Node.js web application for static content that includes a blog. It was created as the basis for my own website, but everyone is welcome to use it. The implementation strives to be simple and free of unnecessary dependencies.

Goals

• An easy way to create a simple, secure website with a blog
• Support for text-based and photo-based blog formats
• Easy authoring in HTML, Markdown (with code formatting), or JSON
• Ordering of posts by publish date or content date
• Easy customization of site layout and formatting
• High resolution (2x) support for photo blog images
• Support for Windows and Linux hosting with Node.js
• Simple post format that separates content and metadata
• Ability to author hidden posts and schedule a publish date
• Ability to create posts that never show up in the timeline
• Support for archive links and tagging of posts by category
• Quick search of post content, including simple search queries
• Automatic Twitter and Open Graph metadata for social media
• Automatic cross-linking of related posts
• No JavaScript requirement for client browsers

Structure

• /app.js Entry point for the application, configures the server and static content
• /blog.js Implementation of the blog, archives, tags, search, and RSS
• /config.js Environment variables used to control basic behavior
• /sites/shared.js(x) Blog layout code shared by the sample sites
• /sites/sample-text/render.js(x) Blog layout code for the sample text blog
• /sites/sample-text/static/... Static files and directories for the sample text blog
• /sites/sample-text/posts/... Post metadata and content for the sample text blog
• /sites/sample-photo/... Sample photo blog
• /sites/test/... Test site for running unit tests

Instructions

1. Install Node.js
2. Fork and clone repository
3. Create directory under /sites or use one of the samples
4. Add static content to /sites/yoursite/static
5. Add post JSON and content under /sites/yoursite/posts
6. npm install
7. npm run compile
8. npm start
9. Open http://localhost:3000/ and verify
10. Commit changes to repository
11. Deploy repository to hosting service

Configuration

• SWWB_SITE_ROOT Set to specify the site to use when serving content (ex: ./sites/sample-text)
• SWWB_REDIRECT_TO_HTTPS Set to true to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS and set an HSTS header
• SWWB_SHOW_FUTURE_POSTS Set to true to show posts with a publish date in the future (good when authoring locally)
• SWWB_HOSTNAME_TOKEN Set to change the replacement token for inserting host name in posts (RSS uses absolute URLs)
• SWWB_ACME_CHALLENGE Set to specify the ACME challenge for Let's Encrypt (ex: abc.123,def.456)

Dependencies

Project	Home Page
Express	https://expressjs.com/
React	https://reactjs.org/
Helmet	https://helmetjs.github.io/
markdown-it	https://github.com/markdown-it/markdown-it
highlight.js	https://highlightjs.org/
Lunr	https://lunrjs.com/
rss	https://github.com/dylang/node-rss

Contributing

• Open issue, discuss proposal
• Fork and clone repository
• Change code and update tests
• npm test
• npm run lint
• Review changes
• Send pull request

License

MIT