#blog-helper

Small program to add templates and add blogpost entry to main webpage with easy customization settings.

It utilizes the builtin modules, and a config-manager script and is a pretty small code base to understand for easy maintenance and extensibility.

#Requirements

In the website folder, ie, the place where your website is stored, you MUST have a templates/ folder with the following three files:

• head.html: this is what gets added at the top of the webpage
• foot.html: this is what gets added at the bottom of the webpage
• entry.html: this is how each blog entry will be added to the main webpage

If you want an rss feed as well, the following 3 files will also be needed in the templates/ folder:

• rsshead.xml: corresponds to head.html for rss feed
• rssfoot.xml: corresponds to foot.html for rss feed
• rssentry.xml: corresponds to entry.html for rss feed

Note: the names of these files can be customized in your web_config.json file; if you run the program once it will automatically be created.

#Installation

It's best to use Nix to install blog-helper into your system/project flake.

An example flake is given to add blog-helper into a dev shell:

{
  inputs.blog-helper.url = "sourcehut:~gotlou/blog-helper";
  inputs.blog-helper.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, blog-helper }:
    let
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      pkgs = import nixpkgs { inherit system; };
    in
    {
      devShells.${system}.default = pkgs.mkShell {
        name = "blog-shell";
        buildInputs = [
          blog-helper.packages.x86_64-linux.default
        ];
      };
    };
}

You can also use pip to install it if Nix is not an option for you:

git clone https://git.sr.ht/~gotlou/blog-helper
cd blog-helper
pip install .     

#Usage

• First initialize the program

blog-helper init

This creates the web_config.json file that has lots of configuration options. Edit this file to specify the name of your:

 * head file
 * foot file
 * entry file
 * index file (this is the main webpage where each post will be added)
 * the comment style for specifying that your file's head has ended, or your file's foot is beginning
 * enabling rss feed
 * main page link for your website
 * date and timestamp with custom formatting 
 * custom placeholders for content
 * and much more!
 

These are pretty self-explanatory, but a more detailed explanation of each variable found in the file will be written at a later date.

Note: some of these options are intended for future features, so don't mess around with those until the feature has been added.

Check this link for details on custom layouts (look for Directive)

After this, go ahead and edit certain parameters to your liking, like if you want rss enabled

• Add rss feed (make sure to set rss to 1 in json file and pagelink to your website in web_config.json file)

blog-helper add-rss

You HAVE to run this command, as this creates the rss.xml file (as per default settings) where your rss feed resides.

• Add templates to given webpage FILENAME (this is known as polish).

This will also modify your <title> tag value if you write title placeholder in the head.html template. So for example, <title>this is a title</title> will become <title>Hello world!</title> if your content starts with <h1 id='...'>Hello world!</title>

blog-helper add-polish FILENAME

• Add entry to the main webpage (if rss has already been enabled it will add an entry to the rss feed as well)

blog-helper add-entry FILENAME

• Update polish for a webpage

blog-helper update-polish FILENAME

• Remove polish from a webpage (this will print the raw webpage to stdin, so make sure to redirect it to a file)

blog-helper remove-polish FILENAME

• Update polish for index.html

blog-helper update-index FILENAME

#Upcoming Features

• PyPI installation method: to encourage easy usage via the command line, which is what this project is all about

• Sample templates so that it can be cleared up how to write these; these will be uploaded soon to this repo

• RSS feed customization, such as adding images, author's email and other info

• Pages of index.html so that it doesn't just load an extremely long page of blog posts ;)

• Argument parsing support