bashlessblog

bashblog but less

Bashlessblog is a simple static site generator that outputs a blog.

It is a .net port of the excellent bash script bashblog which was originally written by Carlos Fenollosa.

This project aims to take everything that makes bashblog great and apply it to a different workflow. Namely decoupling the editing and publishing process from a remote server and instead having a local first workflow and publishing the output more like a traditional static site generation workflow. Basically I wanted more freedom in text editors, more compatibility with syncing using git, and more cross platform support.

Getting Started

1. Install the .NET 8 Runtime on your target platform.
2. Create a directory where the blog artifacts will live (config, inputs, outputs, etc.)
3. Copy the bashlessblog utility to this directory
4. Run the command bashlessblog init to initialize the default blog structure
5. Edit the .config file, the GlobalUrl setting is especially important as this defines the base URL for the blog. I also suggest changing the license to something more permissive like a Creative Commons license.
6. Run the command bashlessblog new to create a new draft in the drafts directory
7. Edit your new post using your favorite text editor
8. Publish the post using bashlessblog post drafts\title-on-this-line.md - don't worry the filename will be updated with the title you supplied when you edited the post
9. Check out your new post in the output directory
10. Publish the contents of the output directory to your favorite web host

Usage

bashlessblog init
Initializes a new blog structure in the current directory

bashlessblog new [-html] [title]
Creates a new draft in the drafts folder, using commonmark flavored markdown '-html' overrides the default behavior and creates an HTML draft 'title' will override the default title with the supplied title, the title must be in quotes

bashlessblog edit [filename]
Creates a draft from a published post and depublishes the post

bashlessblog post [filename]
Publishes a draft post to the blog

bashlessblog delete [filename]
Deletes a published post

bashlessblog rebuild [-all]
Regenerates all the pages and posts, preserving the content of the entries '-all' will regenerate the CSS, title, header, and footer files (caution: custom and edited files will be deleted!)

bashlessblog list
Lists all posts

bashlessblog tags [-n]
Lists all tags in alphabetical order Use '-n' to sort list by number of posts

For more information and advanced features, please check the comments and configuration options in Config.cs

Compatibility with bashblog

This project largely maintains compatibility with bashblog and can be used with an existing bashblog blog. The differences are:

• Writing a post is separated into two distinct steps, creating a draft and publishing that draft
• The editing of a draft is an external step and is done outside of the program flow
• Post dates are generated from the embedded timestamps in the post content, this preserves post dates from being mangled when used with git
• The directory structure is organized into inputs and outputs instead of everything being in a single directory
• Social media and third party tracking support is removed
• Removed reset command, see: man rm

While I did port the functionality for static pages and personalized headers and body, these features are untested.

Using bashlessblog with an existing bashblog

To use bashlessblog with an existing bashblog, add the following items to .config so bashlessblog will use the single directory structure

BackupDir=""
IncludeDir=""
OutputDir=""
CssInclude=('main.css' 'blog.css')
HeaderFile=".header.html"
FooterFile=".footer.html"

Upgrading an existing bashblog blog to bashlessblog defaults

1. Create three new directories in the bashblog directory
   1. backup
   2. includes
   3. output
2. Move any backup archives to the backup directory
3. Move .footer.html, .header.html, .title.html, blog.css and main.css to the includes directory
4. Combine the contents of blog.css and main.css into a single blog.css, deleting main.css
5. Move everything EXCEPT bashlessblog(.exe) and .config into the output directory

Acknowledgments

This software is a port of bashblog and uses Markdig for it's markdown support.

Thanks to:

Carlos Fenollosa for creating bashblog

Alexandre MUTEL aka xoofx author of Markdig