= Serious

Serious is a blog engine inspired by other filesystem-based engines like jekyll (http://jekyllrb.com/) 
and toto (http://cloudhead.io/toto) and is based upon Sinatra and rack, thus can be hosted
very easily (and for free) on heroku (http://heroku.com). 

The articles are stored in plain text files with an opinionated naming scheme which is used for
getting the date and permalink of your article: <code>articles/2010-02-14-will-you-be-my-valentine.txt</code>

The actual content of the article is lazy-loaded only when accessed, so things don't get messy when a lot
of articles has to be maintained. Articles consist of a YAML front, an optional summary and the body,
so a basic article looks something like this:

  title: My shiny article
  author: Christoph Olszowka
  
  Some nice summary.
  ~
  ## Some content. You can use markdown in your articles, and also <%= "erb" %>
  <% highlight do %>
    puts "it will also syntax-highlight your codes"
  <% end %>
  
There are quite a few assumptions made by this format: You have to specify your title in yaml format
upfront. You can also specify an author for this article. If you don't, it will fall-back to the
default one (see configuration). Then two newlines must follow to seperate the yaml from the actual
content. After this, you can type your blog post. If you want a summary, add in the summary/body
delimiter "~", so Serious knows what you want.
  
Serious makes use of StupidFormatter (http://github.com/colszowka/stupid_formatter) for formatting
your articles, so you get ERb, Markdown and Coderay syntax highlighting for free and can customize
the processing chain to your liking, add custom ERb helpers and so on. See the documentation of
stupid_formatter (http://rdoc.info/projects/colszowka/stupid_formatter) to learn how to 
customize the formatting.

Articles with a date in the future will not appear on the site, thus allowing you to prepare article
that should be published later.

== Getting started

Install the gem:
  
  sudo gem install serious

You can use the supplied generator using the <code>serious</code> executable provided with the gem.
Type <code>serious</code> in your shell to see the available options.

By default the generator will create the app with gem-based public and views directories and initialize
a git repository. To host your app on heroku instantly, supply the --heroku option, which will use
the heroku gem to create your app and push it to heroku via git. Type:

  serious my-fancy-blog --heroku
  
And you can go to http://my-fancy-blog.heroku.com to see your new blog!

== The setup

The directory basic directory structure of your Serious site would be something like this:

  serious_blog/
  - articles
    - 2010-02-14-will-you-be-my-valentine.txt
  - pages
    - about.txt
  - config.ru
  - Gemfile
  - Rakefile
  
The config.ru is pretty straight-forward if you want to stick to the defaults:

  require 'serious'
  Serious.set :title, "My Sweet Little Blog"
  Serious.set :author, "Christoph Olszowka"
  Serious.set :url, 'http://mysweetlittleblog.heroku.com'
  run Serious
  
The Gemfile to resolve dependencies (i.e. when hosting on heroku)

  source :rubygems
  gem "serious"
  
The Rakefile, which is obviously totally optional but highly recommended looks like this:

  require 'serious'
  require 'serious/tasks'
  
== Supported Rubies

The gem tests are run against 1.8.7, REE, 1.9.1 and 1.9.2, so Serious should run fine at least
on those interpreters - it is highly recommended to go with 1.9.2 though.
  
== Creating heroku app manually

Assuming you've got the heroku gem installed and set up and you've set up git for your blog with
<code>git init</code> or sticked with the generator, which created your git repo, you can now do:
  
  heroku create mysweetlittleblog
  git push heroku master
  
Point your browser to the url, and bang, you're ready!

== Running locally

You might also want to test your blog locally. Use the <code>rake server</code> command inside
your site's directory.

You can also use thin (<code>sudo gem install thin</code>) with:

  thin -R config.ru start
  
Go to <code>localhost:3000</code> and enjoy.

== Archives

The whole archives can be accessed at <code>/archives</code>. Archives by year, month and date
are available at <code>/2009</code> (all of 2009), <code>/2009/05</code> (May 2009), 
<code>/2009/05/15</code> (May 15th 2009).

== Static pages

Static pages are quite similar to blog articles, in that their formatting and processing is the same.
They have a yaml front matter, content that gets piped through the StupidFormatter and so on.
The filename sans the extension serves as the permalink, pages can be reached via 
<code>/pages/PERMALINK</code>, so the content in pages/about.txt will be served at 
<code>/pages/about</code>

== Rake tasks

If you've set up the Rakefile in your site's main directory like mentioned above (this happens 
automatically when generating with the <code>serious</code> executable), you have the following 
tasks available:

  rake article:create    # Creates a new article
  rake article:validate  # Validates all articles, making sure they can be processed correctly
  rake server            # Runs a server hosting your site on localhost:3000 using rackup

The default is article:create, so to create a new article, just type <code>rake</code>,
specify your title and optionally a date and you're ready to go!

It's highly recommended that you run the <code>article:validate</code> task before publishing,
since it will make sure everything gets processed correctly.

Please be aware that you have to run the Rake tasks from the top level directory (where your
<code>config.ru</code> file resides) since the config.ru file will be loaded to reflect your
settings.

== Comments with disqus

You can activate comments for articles very easily with disqus (http://disqus.com) by setting
the <code>disqus</code> property to your disqus-id (e.g. 'myfancysite'). Disqus developer mode will
be automatically activated for requests served by http://localhost so you can preview your settings
and layout properly.

  Serious.set :disqus, 'yourid'
  
== Google Analytics

You can activate Google Analytics by setting the <code>google_analytics</code> property to your 
tracker id (something like 'UA-123123-5'). The required code will then be included to your site.
For requests served from http://localhost, the inclusion is skipped.

  Serious.set :google_analytics, 'UA-123123-5'

== Configuration options

Inside your config.ru, you can customize the settings for your Serious site.

=== Custom view templates or public folder

==== Changing the path to the public folder
  
Say you want to stick with the default view templates, but are willing to customize the css
to make things prettier. You can do so. Get the provided css from <code>lib/serious/site/public</code>
and point Serious to your new public folder, which assumingly lies in the current working directory
(which is where your config.ru file is)
  
  Serious.set :public, File.join(Dir.getwd, 'public')
  
Serious will now serve the public directory from your custom location, but still get the views
provided with the gem.

==== Changing the path to the views

Accordingly, if you want to stick with the default css, but want to customize the templates (would anyone
want to do this?), specify the views path and get the provided ones from the gem as a starting point.

  Serious.set :views, File.join(Dir.getwd, 'views')
  
==== Setting the root

The most likely case though will surely be that you want to move both <code>public</code> and 
<code>views</code> into your site. Again, just copy over the provided assets from the gems
<code>lib/serious/site/</code> folder into your own site and modify them to your liking.
You'll have to specify a new root for your site, set to the current working directory, where
your config.ru resides:

  Serious.set :root, Dir.getwd
  
Note that you do not have to specify the views and public folders separately, they'll be hosted
from the roots views and public subdirectory.

=== Setting the articles path

You want your articles hosted from your home directory or fancy a different folder name?
Use the :article property, which defaults to the articles subdirectory of the current
working dir (a.k.a. where your config.ru sits)

  Serious.set :articles, '/home/youruser/myblogposts'
  
=== Setting the pages path

Similarily to the articles path, the pages will be served from your sites working directory's
subdirectory <code>pages</code>. Customize this with:

  Serious.set :pages, '/home/youruser/mystaticpages'
  
=== The title

The title is used for your atom feed, the site name and so on. It defaults to 'Serious' and you 
can specify it with:

  Serious.set :title, "My Sweet Little Blog"

=== The author

If you don't want to specify the author for each article separately in the YAML front matter,
you can define the blog author, which will be used as a fall-back when no custom article author
is given in the YAML. It defaults to 'unknown'

  Serious.set :author, "Christoph Olszowka"
  
=== The url

Well, your site has to know where it lives to provide proper links in your atom feed. Configure this
with the url setting, which defaults to 'http://localhost:3000'
  
  Serious.set :url, 'http://localhost:3000'

=== The date format

There is a helper in the Date class for formatting dates according to the configuration specified
in Serious.date_format and which is used in the frontend. It defaults to "%B %o %Y", which expands
to (i.e.) 'December 24th, 2009'. Notice that %o is a custom flag that is not built-in in the default
strftime method of Date. It returns the ordinal name of the day. Customize with:

  Serious.set :date_format, "%Y-%m-%d"
  
=== Disqus comments

To enable disqus comments, specify your disqus id with the disqus property. Disqus is disabled 
by default. See section above for more information on disqus and comments.

  Serious.set :disqus, 'yourdisqusid'
  
=== Google Analytics

To enable google analytics, specify your tracker id at the property <code>google_analytics</code>.
See section above for more information on Google Analytics.

  Serious.set :google_analytics, 'UA-123123-5'
  
=== Custom feed url in layout

If you want to specify a different feed url for the head link tag, for example to point your readers
to Feedburner, you can do so by specifiyng the <code>feed_url</code> option and setting up your
feed to be burned by feedburner based upon <code>http://yoururl.com/atom.xml</code>.

  Serious.set :feed_url, 'http://feeds.feedburner.com/myfeedurl'  
  
=== Displayed items

You can specify how many items you want displayed across your site:

==== Amount of feed items

To customize the amount of items in your atom feed (living under /atom.xml), set the 
items_in_feed property to an integer. This defaults to 25.
  
  Serious.set :items_in_feed, 50
  
==== Amount of items with summary on index

On your index page, the most recent items will be displayed including the summary (or the whole
post if you did not use the summary/body delimiter). This defaults to 3 items, but can be customized:

  Serious.set :items_on_index, 5
  
==== Amount of archive items on index

Below the items with summaries on your main page, there's also a list of 'archived' items, which
only includes the title and date. This defaults to 10 items, but can be customized as well:

  Serious.set :archived_on_index, 10
  
=== Cache timeout

All pages served are automatically getting a Cache-Control header, so they get cached in your
visitor's browsers as well as in Varnish on Heroku (http://docs.heroku.com/http-caching) 
(or some similar tool when you host yourself). The timeout is set to 300 seconds by default, but
can be customized with:

  Serious.set :cache_timeout, 300
  
=== Article formatting

You can define the formatting chain for StupidFormatter with:

  StupidFormatter.chain = [StupidFormatter::RDiscount]

You'll surely want to read the documentation of StupidFormatter (http://github.com/colszowka/stupid_formatter)
to learn how to add your own formatters or erb helpers.

== TODO

* unescaped special chars in yaml front matter can lead to errors
* text not readable in android
* valid xhtml in demo setup
* make summary delim configurable
* improve caching
* make it possible to host in subdirectories
* allow for choice between erb/haml templates

== Note on Patches/Pull Requests
 
* Fork the project.
* Make your feature addition or bug fix.
* Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a
  future version unintentionally.
* Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history.
  (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
* Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

== Thanks

Alexis Sellier for toto, the main inspiration for this gem
Ryan Bates for the great coderay css

== Copyright

Copyright (c) 2010 Christoph Olszowka. See LICENSE for details.