Shinmun - a file based blog engine ================================= Shinmun is a small file based blog engine. Write posts in your favorite editor, track them with git and deploy to Heroku. Small, fast and simple. ### Features * Posts are text files formatted with [Markdown][8], [Textile][9] or [HTML][10] * Deploy via [git-push][11] * Easy and fast deploying on Heroku * Index, category and archive listings * RSS feeds * Syntax highlighting provided by [CodeRay][4] ### Quickstart Install the gems: $ gem install shinmun Create a sample blog: $ shinmun init myblog This will create a directory with all necessary files. Now start the web server: $ cd myblog $ rackup Browse to the following url: http://localhost:9292 Voilà, your first blog is up and running! ### Writing Posts Posts can be created by using the `shinmun` command inside your blog folder: shinmun post 'The title of the post' Shinmun will then create a post file in the right place, for example in `posts/2008/9/the-title-of-the-post.md`. ### Post Format Each blog post is just a text file with a YAML header and a body. The YAML header is surrounded with 2 lines of 3 dashes. The YAML header has following attributes: * `title`: mandatory * `date`: posts need one, pages not * `category`: a post belongs to one category * `tags`: a comma separated list of tags Example post: --- date: 2008-09-05 category: Ruby tags: bluecloth, markdown title: BlueCloth, a Markdown library --- This is the summary, which is by definition the first paragraph of the article. The summary shows up in category listings or the index listing. ### Syntax highlighting Thanks to the fantastic highlighting library [CodeRay][4], highlighted code blocks can be embedded easily in Markdown. For Textile support you have to require `coderay/for_redcloth`. These languages are supported: C, Diff, Javascript, Scheme, CSS, HTML, XML, Java, JSON, RHTML, YAML, Delphi To activate CodeRay for a code block, you have to declare the language in lower case: @@ruby def method_missing(id, *args, &block) puts "#{id} was called with #{args.inspect}" end **Note that the declaration MUST be followed by a blank line!** ### Directory layout + config.ru + pages + about.md + posts + 2007 + 2008 + 9 + my-article.md + public + styles.css + templates + 404.rhtml + archive.rhtml + category.rhtml + index.rhtml + index.rxml + layout.rhtml + page.rhtml + post.rhtml ### Blog configuation In `config.ru` you can set the properties of your blog: blog.config = { :language => 'en', :title => "Blog Title", :author => "The Author", :categories => ["Ruby", "Javascript"], :description => "Blog description" } ### Templates Layout and templates are rendered by *ERB*. The layout is defined in `templates/layout.rhtml`. The content will be provided in the variable `@content`. A minimal example: <%= @blog.title %> <%= stylesheet_link_tag 'style' %> <%= @content %> The attributes of a post are accessible via the @post variable:

<%= @post.title %>

<%= human_date @post.date %>

<%= @post.body_html %> ...

### Deployment on Heroku Install the Heroku gem: $ gem install heroku Installing your public key: $ heroku keys:add Enter your Heroku credentials. Email: joe@example.com Password: Uploading ssh public key /Users/joe/.ssh/id_rsa.pub Create an app on Heroku. $ heroku create myblog Created http://myblog.heroku.com/ | git@heroku.com:mybblog.git Git remote heroku added Now on your local machine, you create a new remote repository and push your blog to Heroku: $ cd ~/myblog $ git init $ git add . $ git commit -m 'initial commit' $ git push heroku That's it. Your blog is deployed. ### GitHub Project Download or fork the package at my [github repository][1] [1]: http://github.com/georgi/shinmun [2]: http://www.matthias-georgi.de/2008/9/quick-guide-for-passenger-on-ubuntu-hardy.html [3]: http://github.com/georgi/kontrol [4]: http://coderay.rubychan.de/ [5]: http://www.modrails.com/ [6]: http://github.com/rack/rack [7]: http://github.com/georgi/git_store [8]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ [9]: http://textile.thresholdstate.com/ [10]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html [11]: http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-push.html