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Old 25th January 2011
Mantazz Mantazz is offline
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Default Advice on setting up blogging on a FBSD server

I will soon be setting up a new FBSD server at home, for my personal web page. This is a low-traffic website that is mostly just for me to play around with; the main thing it hosts is my own blog which attracts a pretty small crowd - maybe a few dozen hits a day. I'm not specifically looking to increase my web traffic at this point, either.

However, I am looking for something that might be a little easier to manage. Currently its all flat files, which of course become a PITA after a while. My current system is just running Apache22, with no real connection to a database.

I would like to set up the new webserver to be a PHP/MySQL configuration, and I am looking through the ports collection for a blogging program. Since I'm setting up a new system, I figure setting up it up properly from the beginning should be a priority.

Of course, I know I could just as well do all my blogging through a commercial (or free) effort on some other web server. With my very low total traffic volume that wouldn't be a bad option, but I'd like to try running it from home anyways.

Any recommendations? I checked freshports.org and found a few potential candidates - "bblog", "blogsum", "cblog", "nanoblogger", "nibbleblog", and others. Any particular insights from our experts on which ones work better?

My first priority in making a choice would likely be ease of use. Second would be security, third would be how it renders as a web site by default (appearance). Flexibility probably wouldn't be of enormous importance, since 99.999% of my blog will be text or simple images.
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Old 25th January 2011
J65nko J65nko is offline
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I have not any experience with it, but http://www.freshports.org/www/wordpress/ seems to be rather popular.
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Old 25th January 2011
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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Jason Dixon is a semi-popular name in the BSD community (..for his humorous conference talks), he wrote blogsum.. which you listed, but it doesn't use MySQL or PHP.

For popular blogging software like wordpress, you'll need to keep it updated.. as security vulnerabilities appear more often than naught.

I can't give you my recommendation, as I do not blog.
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Old 25th January 2011
Gerard Gerard is offline
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Default FreeBSD News uses Wordpress

Wordpress is IMHO the best platform for blogging. It's simple and easy to use, easy to maintain and has 1000s of plugins to make it even better.


I use it for my FreeBSD News site: http://freebsdnews.net (sorry I'm not allowed to create a hyperlink for this address.

Last edited by vermaden; 25th January 2011 at 09:53 AM. Reason: You are now ;)
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Old 25th January 2011
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Carpetsmoker Carpetsmoker is offline
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Stuff like "cblog" or "nanoblogger" work by taking some source file, and outputting a static HTML file.

This is different from for example WordPress which fetches the content from the database and generates it dynamically.

My advice would be KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid.
Just write your stuff in HTML, or some easier tag format (markdown, txt2tags, etc.)
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Old 25th January 2011
Mantazz Mantazz is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Carpetsmoker View Post
Stuff like "cblog" or "nanoblogger" work by taking some source file, and outputting a static HTML file.

This is different from for example WordPress which fetches the content from the database and generates it dynamically.
That is good to know. I was just starting to look into what the differences were - although since a couple people have already suggested WordPress - and I'd like it to be db-driven anyways - I'm leaning in that direction.

Quote:
My advice would be KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid.
Oh I assure you, I can insert plenty of Stupid regardless of how simple it may appear
Quote:
Just write your stuff in HTML, or some easier tag format (markdown, txt2tags, etc.)
That is what I've been doing so far. The result is now my blog is four pages of plain text. Eventually the flat files just become a royal PITA to try to maintain; I think I've reached that point. For that matter, pages that I call my "blog" look very little like anything else (I know blog software won't solve this for me on its own), and even between different "blogs" I have varied appearance and whatnot.

So basically what I'm aiming for with the blog software is easier maintenance - I should mention also I'd like it to be something that my wife could use as well if she'd want - as well as a more consistent (and easier to change across-the-site) appearance.

While I'm sure I could probably do something clever with Perl or PHP to improve on some of this, I'm about to start building a new home server anyways and I think that adopting a more common piece of software for it would be advantageous.
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Old 25th January 2011
J65nko J65nko is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mantazz View Post
That is what I've been doing so far. The result is now my blog is four pages of plain text. Eventually the flat files just become a royal PITA to try to maintain; I think I've reached that point.
If I wanted to maintain a simple blog I would use make(1).

Each blog entry is a separate file with a name like 'blog2011-01-24_2210.txt'
The write some tiny scripts and/or Makefiles rules to generate a page with HTML links to each entry.

You also could have 'make' collect all entries for Janary 2011 in one file, those of Feb 2011 in another.
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Old 25th January 2011
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classicmanpro classicmanpro is offline
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Post WordPress

I recommend WordPress and, since you want blogs for other family members, I also recommend a Multisite installation. With Multisite, you can create a WordPress.com-like system.

Maintenance: If you choose WordPress, either simple or Multisite, please consider using suPHP as it will allow you to update the blog, plugins and its themes more easily (automatically).
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Old 25th January 2011
J65nko J65nko is offline
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I just hacked a sample Makefile which shows how easy it is to append a file or blog entry to a main file without editing the main file
Actually it allows you to create a file out of small building blocks. You only have to deal with the building blocks.

Code:
# Makefile to create a blog

#Jan 25 22:12 2011-01-25_2209.txt
#Jan 25 22:12 2011-01-22_2245.txt
#Jan 25 22:13 2011-01-01_1400.txt
#Jan 25 22:15 2011-02-01_1623.txt
#Jan 25 22:16 2011-02-04_1256.txt

YEAR = 2011

JAN !=  ls ${YEAR}-01*
FEB !=  ls ${YEAR}-02* 

# maybe better to use a year dir with a subdir for each month
# JAN	!=  ls ${YEAR}/01/*txt
# but then the Makefile has to be adjusted

all:	Blog${YEAR}-01.txt  Blog${YEAR}-02.txt

test:
	@echo ${YEAR} ${JAN}
	@echo ${YEAR} ${FEB}

Blog${YEAR}-01.txt: ${JAN}
	cat ${.ALLSRC} > ${.TARGET}

Blog${YEAR}-02.txt: ${FEB}
	cat ${.ALLSRC} > ${.TARGET}

clean:
	rm Blog${YEAR}-??.txt
The variables JAN and FEB are set to the file names for that month:
Code:
$ make test
2011 2011-01-01_1400.txt 2011-01-22_2245.txt 2011-01-25_2209.txt
2011 2011-02-01_1623.txt 2011-02-04_1256.txt
Explanation of the Makefile rule:
Code:
Blog${YEAR}-01.txt: ${JAN}
	cat ${.ALLSRC} > ${.TARGET}
The "Blog${YEAR}-01.txt" is the target, or the file to be created.
The dependencies are the source files defined by the JAN variable 2011-01-01_1400.txt, 2011-01-22_2245.txt and 2011-01-25_2209.txt.

If the target 'Blog2011-01.txt' does not exist it will be created.
If one of it's dependent files is edited and has a newer time stamp than the target, the target will be recreated.
After adding a new blog entry file, the target will again be recreated.

Invoking make without any arguments will create or recreate if necessary, the all target, which is the first and thus default target:
Code:
$ make
cat 2011-01-01_1400.txt 2011-01-22_2245.txt 2011-01-25_2209.txt > Blog2011-01.txt
cat 2011-02-01_1623.txt 2011-02-04_1256.txt > Blog2011-02.txt
Running make for a second time:
Code:
$ make
Nothing to do, so nothing happens.

Let us now create a new blog entry and run make
Code:
$ vi 2011-02-05_0812.txt

$ make

cat 2011-02-01_1623.txt 2011-02-04_1256.txt 2011-02-05_0812.txt > Blog2011-02.txt
Because dependency 2011-02-05_0812.txt is newer than the target, the target has to be recreated.

To experiment, you can download the attachment and extract with:
Code:
$ tar xvzf pmBlog.tgz

pmBlog
pmBlog/2011-01-01_1400.txt
pmBlog/2011-01-22_2245.txt
pmBlog/2011-01-25_2209.txt
pmBlog/2011-02-01_1623.txt
pmBlog/2011-02-04_1256.txt
pmBlog/2011-02-05_0812.txt
pmBlog/Makefile
It will create a directory 'pmBlog' (poor man Blog), the Makefile and some tiny test files to play with.
Attached Files
File Type: tgz pmBlog.tgz (664 Bytes, 75 views)
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