Create your blogging website from groundup full configured 📓

Motivation:

Everybody is motivated to create a blog website to write on their activities, or share something with their friend and family. But, developing something on own is time consuming and often people resort to the blogging sites which would read your content. Keeping this in mind, this web app is created with basic functionality to bring up docker containers on a purchased VM (aws, digitalocean, heroku etc..) and quickly launch with few commands.

Setup:

Important part of the setup is the centered with env_template, let us look that in details:

Configuration	Description	Values
APP_CONFIG	Config for the app, ideally will point to different database	dev, test, prod
FLASK_BLOG_PORT	PORT to run the blog app	Default:9090
FLASK_ADMIN_PORT	PORT to run blog admin	Default:5005
FLASK_HOST	FLASK listener	Defaults:0.0.0.0 and do not change
DB_USER	Database Username	String username
DB_PASSWORD	Database Password	String password which should be strong
DB_DRIVER	Database driver	Defaults: mysql (Do not change, until using another db)
DB_HOST	Your database host	Docker:mysql_db, Others: Hostname of the VM where DB is present
DB_NAME	Name of the database	String database name
DB_PORT	Mysql PORT	Defaults: 3306
RECAPTCHA_SITE_KEY	Generated RECAPTCHA key	String key needed to handle while commenting
RECAPTCHA_SITE_SECRET	Generated RECAPTCHA Secret	String Secret
MAIL_USERNAME	Admin email id	Any created email id as String
MAIL_PASSWORD	Admin email id password	Any created email password
CACHE_TYPE	Default Flask caching	Defaults:simple
CACHE_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT	Default caching timeout	Default:300s
SECRET_KEY	Flask Secret	Strong secret
UPLOAD_FOLDER	Folder to hold the uploaded content	Defaults:uploads
ADMIN_USERNAME	root username for blog admin	username as String
PASSWORD	root user initial password	password as String
F_NAME	root user name, for posting	String
EMAIL	root user email for replies	String
post_init_limit	Limit of number of post	Defaults:10
blog_header	Name of your blog	String blog name
blog_subheader	Subheader for your blog	Subname
social_git	Git link	String
social_linkedin	Linkedin link	String
social_stack	Stackoverflow Link	String

Once, after creating the environments, rename .env_template to .env (This file will not be shared or push to github). Also, I have added and .env_example to fasten the process.

Recaptcha setup:

Please follow the google recaptcha setup here: https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/docs/v3 and add the RECAPTCHA_SITE_KEY and RECAPTCHA_SITE_SECRET.

Building and running Database:

docker-compose -f docker-compose-mysql.yml up -d

Building and running blog_admin:

docker-compose build blog-admin-app docker-compose up -d blog-admin-app

Building and running blog_app:

docker-compose build blog-app docker-compose up -d blog-app

Run locally:

Running blog_admin locally:

1. First start the mysql database as above and point the same configurations in .env file.
2. Then export the FLASK_APP from the root directory of the project which is SimplisticBlogger in this case as export FLASK_APP=blog_admin/app.
3. To run, then use flask run --port 5000

Running only blog locally:

1. First start the admin so that the author for the blog is created and create a post if you wish to.
2. First start the mysql database as above and point the same configurations in .env file.
3. Then export the FLASK_APP from the root directory of the project which is SimplisticBlogger in this case as export FLASK_APP=blog/app.
4. To run, then use flask run --port 5001

Some screenshots:

1. Blog Admin:
   
   
   
2. Blog App:

Extensions ✏️:

1. Currently the app uses Summernote editor for making a blog post, future look to integrate markdown editors.
2. Improving comments and replies. (The current implementation only considers a simple way to do stuff, this can be improved)
3. About me page can be attempted to be made dynamic.

Contact for any information/pull:

Subash Prakash

Give a ⭐ if this project has been useful to you in any ways.

Acknowledgements:

1. bootstrap clean blog
2. Summernote