7 ms·

Open-sourcing my new blogging engine implementation

43 points by MadRabbit 11y ago

csense 11y ago
Nikola, Pelican, and Jekyll are frameworks built around a similar philosophy.
- MadRabbit 11y ago
  that's true, but you need a ruby environment and some hooks to build Jekyll I didn't want to build a new _generator_. I wanted a self-containing thing that doesn't need a runtime environment
- tarr11 11y ago
  It would be nice if everyone standardized the folder and data formats on jekyll. Then, I could consider switching to a new engine without much work.
  - zuck9 11y ago
    Could you elaborate on what you mean by standardising folder and data formats?
klekticist 11y ago
I like this. Very cool :)
- MadRabbit 11y ago
  thanks! :)
click170 11y ago
It seems to require Javascript to load the content. Is there information about this elsewhere that doesn't require Javascript to view?
- steckerbrett 11y ago
  Yeah, that's nasty. It's a blog post, it's about as close to static content as you can get. It's not even listed in the pros and cons that this is a perceivable issue, which you can see once you allow the swathes of JavaScript to download and execute.
- detaro 11y ago
  It builds the page using javascript from a copy of this file: https://github.com/MadRabbit/nikolay.rocks/blob/master/pages/Rocket%20Shed/2015-07-24-how-i-blog-now.md https://github.com/MadRabbit/nikolay.rocks/blob/master/pages...
  - click170 11y ago
    Oh I get it now! lol at the irony of my comment, I honestly had no idea. I personally wouldn't use this for my blog because in my opinion a blog shouldn't require Javascript to display content, but I know I'm in the minority there and it's important that people try different things and push the boundaries. Thank you for sharing this OP!
    - ams6110 11y ago
      I strongly agree. It's fine if you want to use javascript to augment appearance and behavior, but if a blog post won't load something basically readable in lynx or w3m or similar, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere.
      - Rapzid 11y ago
        I could care less as long as my browser loads it. I don't surf the internet with cURL though, so it doesn't really effect me.
      - MadRabbit 11y ago
        that's like saying that "if you can't print it on punch cards it's all bad". the progress didn't stop with lynx. probably good 90% of the modern internet won't work without javascript
yuez 11y ago
Great! I'm searching for more open sourced blogs like yours.
Touche 11y ago
Text shouldn't have a loading spinner. React can do server side rendering so I'd take advantage of that.
- MadRabbit 11y ago
  there is no server side
  - AdieuToLogic 11y ago
    > there is no server side According to the blog: There is a small #nodejs server that basically does mode-rewrite and sends index.html file for any HTTP request. Sounds like a "server side" to me.
  - Touche 11y ago
    It's served over http so I disagree.
tlarkworthy 11y ago
It seems the development tool that builds and obfuscates the application is not available, which makes it a dubious classification of open source.
- MadRabbit 11y ago
  i use the engine for some commercial work at the moment, i might open-source it eventually as well (if there is enough interest in it). but at the moment it's just a bunch of make-shift scripts thrown together which are not really in a publisheable shape
  - claar 11y ago
    That's reasonable, of course, but it makes the title of this story rather inaccurate. Even so, kudos -- your blog is lightning fast and a pleasure to use. I did try it on my low-end Android phone w/Chrome, and it's plenty fast, and the menu works well, but the header and text overflow the view port.
    - MadRabbit 11y ago
      thanks! i don't have a small android, but i'll see if i can fix it with some google chrome emulator on desktop
      - claar 11y ago
        My apologies -- I updated Chrome and it works fine. That or you fixed something. Either way, nice job.
        MadRabbit 11y ago
        no problem. i didn't touch anything yet. but i did optimize it for iphone5 at some point, so that might be it. but, thank you for letting me know about it either way! :)
  - tlarkworthy 11y ago
nkantar 11y ago
> The overwhelming majority of users have javascript enabled. I find that it's often developers who don't, making it a questionable tradeoff (in my mind) for a blog written by one. For this very reason I choose to use absolutely no JavaScript on mine. (Correction: Oops, Gists are included via JavaScript — I'll be replacing them with code blocks ASAP.) I had some of the same annoyances as the OP, and chose Jekyll + GitHub Pages instead (http://nkantar.com/choosing-jekyll/ http://nkantar.com/choosing-jekyll/). I found that optimizing for my workflow (write Markdown, commit, push) was more worthwhile than having absolutely zero generation tools (which I don't even need if I simply create a new file on GitHub, as a neat bonus I've used at least once so far).
- spc476 11y ago
  I wrote my own blogging engine [1] back when there weren't many (any?) to choose from (started it in 1999), and geared the workflow of posting to my preferred method: email (although it helps that I run my own server) and I'm surprised that method isn't used more often. I can also use a web interface if I am desperate, as well as adding an entry as a file (the email interface is similar to the file mechanism---it just pulls the entry out of the body of the email). Granted, the language I used is rather unorthodox, but it works. [1] https://github.com/spc476/mod_blog https://github.com/spc476/mod_blog
  - AdieuToLogic 11y ago
    A C-based Apache httpd blogging engine using email to create the blog entries... Sweet. Reading the source and discovering: WTF? This isn't a WTF. This is a debugging technique. Hard core! :-)
- MadRabbit 11y ago
  i used jekyll as well, and it's alright. this thing gives you the same workflow minus dependency on ruby runtime or a specific hosting platform that supports jekyll (like github for example). i just write stuff and git push it to heroku
  - 11y ago
neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
All I see is a blank page with a spinner. Using elinks all I see is "Loading..." When I look at the source code there is no content! Not very search engine friendly.
- MadRabbit 11y ago
  all search engines are javascript enabled those days. google indexes nikolay.rocks perfectly. i have analytics running and everything on it
elmin 11y ago
Why not use gulp to build static html pages, and serve those with S3/CloudFront. Simpler, more reliable, and no need to run a node service.
- MadRabbit 11y ago
  because that's an extra moving part, i will have to handle those compiled files separately, collect them somewhere, copy to S3 or whatevers. I don't want that. I want a simple thing that has just the content and a shallow presentation layer that just shows the content in a browser, that's it. No extra transformations or anything, this way the system is immediate and simple. markdown + front-end, no other moving parts
  - jeena 11y ago
    You're doing that with the atom.xml already anyway. Your approach right now doesn't seem to work with search engines very well: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks#hl=en&q=site:http:%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+How+I+Blog+Now https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2... https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+How+I+Blog+Now https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.r... https://yandex.ru/search/?lr=114311&text=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks%20How%20I%20Blog%20Now https://yandex.ru/search/?lr=114311&text=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2... http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+How+I+Blog+Now&qs=n&form=QBLH&pq=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+how+i+blog+now&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=&cvid=9a34c93494e34f40992d3b240500606e http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.roc... https://se.search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+How+I+Blog+Now&fr=yfp-t-925 https://se.search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnik...
    - MadRabbit 11y ago
      looks like it works perfectly
      - jeena 11y ago
        Hm, really? When I click on those links they all show me that they didn't find anything. Ok I see that google did find what I was looking for, I wasn't expecting that. But none of the other search engine did for me. I only got: "No more results.", "По вашему запросу ничего не нашлось", "No results found for site:http://nikolay.rocks http://nikolay.rocks How I Blog Now." and "We did not find results for: site:http://nikolay.rocks http://nikolay.rocks How I Blog Now." When I remove "sites:" from the query then they all find this page on GitHub: https://github.com/MadRabbit/nikolay.rocks/commit/58a90810f1c1bad5e95659e3516c9b03b2771df4?short_path=f2f4e07 https://github.com/MadRabbit/nikolay.rocks/commit/58a90810f1... But that doesn't seem like a nice thing to read, I mean it is better than nothing, but to do that you wouldn't need your own domain and all the JavaScript.
djokkataja 11y ago
If you have a loading spinner and your site already loads in <500ms, just get rid of the spinner. Your brain filters out short transitions anyway, so all a loading spinner does with such a brief time span is distract the user from whatever they were thinking about.
- MadRabbit 11y ago
  fair point. thanks!
- NKCSS 11y ago
  Then why not add a delay to showing the spinner? that way, if it ever takes longer than, say, your 500ms, you'll have an indicator...

43 points by MadRabbit 11y ago

csense 11y ago

Nikola, Pelican, and Jekyll are frameworks built around a similar philosophy.

MadRabbit 11y ago
that's true, but you need a ruby environment and some hooks to build Jekyll I didn't want to build a new _generator_. I wanted a self-containing thing that doesn't need a runtime environment
tarr11 11y ago
It would be nice if everyone standardized the folder and data formats on jekyll. Then, I could consider switching to a new engine without much work.
- zuck9 11y ago
  Could you elaborate on what you mean by standardising folder and data formats?

klekticist 11y ago

I like this. Very cool :)

MadRabbit 11y ago
thanks! :)

click170 11y ago

It seems to require Javascript to load the content. Is there information about this elsewhere that doesn't require Javascript to view?

steckerbrett 11y ago
Yeah, that's nasty. It's a blog post, it's about as close to static content as you can get. It's not even listed in the pros and cons that this is a perceivable issue, which you can see once you allow the swathes of JavaScript to download and execute.
detaro 11y ago
It builds the page using javascript from a copy of this file: https://github.com/MadRabbit/nikolay.rocks/blob/master/pages/Rocket%20Shed/2015-07-24-how-i-blog-now.md https://github.com/MadRabbit/nikolay.rocks/blob/master/pages...
- click170 11y ago
  Oh I get it now! lol at the irony of my comment, I honestly had no idea. I personally wouldn't use this for my blog because in my opinion a blog shouldn't require Javascript to display content, but I know I'm in the minority there and it's important that people try different things and push the boundaries. Thank you for sharing this OP!
  - ams6110 11y ago
    I strongly agree. It's fine if you want to use javascript to augment appearance and behavior, but if a blog post won't load something basically readable in lynx or w3m or similar, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere.
    - Rapzid 11y ago
      I could care less as long as my browser loads it. I don't surf the internet with cURL though, so it doesn't really effect me.
    - MadRabbit 11y ago
      that's like saying that "if you can't print it on punch cards it's all bad". the progress didn't stop with lynx. probably good 90% of the modern internet won't work without javascript

yuez 11y ago

Great! I'm searching for more open sourced blogs like yours.

Touche 11y ago

Text shouldn't have a loading spinner. React can do server side rendering so I'd take advantage of that.

MadRabbit 11y ago
there is no server side
- AdieuToLogic 11y ago
  > there is no server side According to the blog: There is a small #nodejs server that basically does mode-rewrite and sends index.html file for any HTTP request. Sounds like a "server side" to me.
- Touche 11y ago
  It's served over http so I disagree.

tlarkworthy 11y ago

It seems the development tool that builds and obfuscates the application is not available, which makes it a dubious classification of open source.

MadRabbit 11y ago
i use the engine for some commercial work at the moment, i might open-source it eventually as well (if there is enough interest in it). but at the moment it's just a bunch of make-shift scripts thrown together which are not really in a publisheable shape
- claar 11y ago
  That's reasonable, of course, but it makes the title of this story rather inaccurate. Even so, kudos -- your blog is lightning fast and a pleasure to use. I did try it on my low-end Android phone w/Chrome, and it's plenty fast, and the menu works well, but the header and text overflow the view port.
  - MadRabbit 11y ago
    thanks! i don't have a small android, but i'll see if i can fix it with some google chrome emulator on desktop
    - claar 11y ago
      My apologies -- I updated Chrome and it works fine. That or you fixed something. Either way, nice job.
      - MadRabbit 11y ago
        no problem. i didn't touch anything yet. but i did optimize it for iphone5 at some point, so that might be it. but, thank you for letting me know about it either way! :)
- tlarkworthy 11y ago

nkantar 11y ago

> The overwhelming majority of users have javascript enabled. I find that it's often developers who don't, making it a questionable tradeoff (in my mind) for a blog written by one. For this very reason I choose to use absolutely no JavaScript on mine. (Correction: Oops, Gists are included via JavaScript — I'll be replacing them with code blocks ASAP.) I had some of the same annoyances as the OP, and chose Jekyll + GitHub Pages instead (http://nkantar.com/choosing-jekyll/ http://nkantar.com/choosing-jekyll/). I found that optimizing for my workflow (write Markdown, commit, push) was more worthwhile than having absolutely zero generation tools (which I don't even need if I simply create a new file on GitHub, as a neat bonus I've used at least once so far).

spc476 11y ago
I wrote my own blogging engine [1] back when there weren't many (any?) to choose from (started it in 1999), and geared the workflow of posting to my preferred method: email (although it helps that I run my own server) and I'm surprised that method isn't used more often. I can also use a web interface if I am desperate, as well as adding an entry as a file (the email interface is similar to the file mechanism---it just pulls the entry out of the body of the email). Granted, the language I used is rather unorthodox, but it works. [1] https://github.com/spc476/mod_blog https://github.com/spc476/mod_blog
- AdieuToLogic 11y ago
  A C-based Apache httpd blogging engine using email to create the blog entries... Sweet. Reading the source and discovering: WTF? This isn't a WTF. This is a debugging technique. Hard core! :-)
MadRabbit 11y ago
i used jekyll as well, and it's alright. this thing gives you the same workflow minus dependency on ruby runtime or a specific hosting platform that supports jekyll (like github for example). i just write stuff and git push it to heroku
- 11y ago

neoCrimeLabs 11y ago

All I see is a blank page with a spinner. Using elinks all I see is "Loading..." When I look at the source code there is no content! Not very search engine friendly.

MadRabbit 11y ago
all search engines are javascript enabled those days. google indexes nikolay.rocks perfectly. i have analytics running and everything on it

elmin 11y ago

Why not use gulp to build static html pages, and serve those with S3/CloudFront. Simpler, more reliable, and no need to run a node service.

MadRabbit 11y ago
because that's an extra moving part, i will have to handle those compiled files separately, collect them somewhere, copy to S3 or whatevers. I don't want that. I want a simple thing that has just the content and a shallow presentation layer that just shows the content in a browser, that's it. No extra transformations or anything, this way the system is immediate and simple. markdown + front-end, no other moving parts
- jeena 11y ago
  You're doing that with the atom.xml already anyway. Your approach right now doesn't seem to work with search engines very well: https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks#hl=en&q=site:http:%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+How+I+Blog+Now https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2... https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+How+I+Blog+Now https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.r... https://yandex.ru/search/?lr=114311&text=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks%20How%20I%20Blog%20Now https://yandex.ru/search/?lr=114311&text=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2... http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+How+I+Blog+Now&qs=n&form=QBLH&pq=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+how+i+blog+now&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=&cvid=9a34c93494e34f40992d3b240500606e http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.roc... https://se.search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnikolay.rocks+How+I+Blog+Now&fr=yfp-t-925 https://se.search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fnik...
  - MadRabbit 11y ago
    looks like it works perfectly
    - jeena 11y ago
      Hm, really? When I click on those links they all show me that they didn't find anything. Ok I see that google did find what I was looking for, I wasn't expecting that. But none of the other search engine did for me. I only got: "No more results.", "По вашему запросу ничего не нашлось", "No results found for site:http://nikolay.rocks http://nikolay.rocks How I Blog Now." and "We did not find results for: site:http://nikolay.rocks http://nikolay.rocks How I Blog Now." When I remove "sites:" from the query then they all find this page on GitHub: https://github.com/MadRabbit/nikolay.rocks/commit/58a90810f1c1bad5e95659e3516c9b03b2771df4?short_path=f2f4e07 https://github.com/MadRabbit/nikolay.rocks/commit/58a90810f1... But that doesn't seem like a nice thing to read, I mean it is better than nothing, but to do that you wouldn't need your own domain and all the JavaScript.

djokkataja 11y ago

If you have a loading spinner and your site already loads in <500ms, just get rid of the spinner. Your brain filters out short transitions anyway, so all a loading spinner does with such a brief time span is distract the user from whatever they were thinking about.

MadRabbit 11y ago
fair point. thanks!
NKCSS 11y ago
Then why not add a delay to showing the spinner? that way, if it ever takes longer than, say, your 500ms, you'll have an indicator...