VIdeas

Summary

Your blog, using your VI/m editor (yeah that weird you ~~and I~~ are).

Using one of the fastest, most efficient and secure frameworks, ~~Ruby on Rails (haha kidding)~~ Actix web (Rust-based web framework), with simple Rust crates to manage the DB and the templates.

This project is basically a crud that will show static content using a jinja-like template engine. Having the ability to use VI or VIm as your blog entries editor as one of the most interesting "features".

Features

Use Vim and Markdown, forget writing HTML/CSS or using these ugly posts editors. Use what we've been using as devs.
Get it running in minutes
Fly.io-ready deploy (you may just need to change some configuration)
Simple enough. Easy for contributors to join.
You just worry on writing your content. A magic bash script will do the rest of stuff for you.*
And more coming soon...

* More stuff coming (tags, abstract, covers, etc)

Running

Docker

I recommend using Docker in order to save time. Even though these docker configurations are not the most efficient you'll see they get the things running. I plan to create a distroless iamge after completing the main features of the blog.

docker-compose up -d

Alternatively you can use this utility called docker-app: diegoacuna/docker-app

Cargo

If you prefer to use cargo directly then run these commands (same you'll find on the Dockerfile):

cargo install diesel_cli --no-default-features --features sqlite # ORM
# Then
diesel setup # Migrations
# Finally
cargo run

Cargo watch

During development it's better to use cargo watch in order to save time when making changes and trying to testing them in the browser. You can find the repo here

cargo watch -c --why -d 5 -x run # this is the one I use

These instructions might be not entirely accurate, please open an issue if you face any trouble.

Customisation

To add your picture, name, links, and so forth, you can go to templates/config. You'll find a set of HTML files ready for customisation. The only thing you won't find here is the title of the main page, which can be edited in templates/base.html.

Remember, this project is open source. Meaning that you can navigate through the code to customise whatever you want or need.

Writing a post

To create a post it's simple as opening the write_entry script:

bash write_entry.sh

This will open a vim editor. And that's it, once you finish writing your post using MD it should be saved into the DB.

Please take in consideration that this project is still in progress. You may find vulnerabilities and issues in the process of creating a post. In any case you can refer to the tests/bash folder to check the status of the work regarding bash scripts. (you can run bash tests/bash/runAll.sh from the root directory.

Personal note from me

I started this project one night I got anxious because I lost my Scribe stylus and had to write down my daily report (therapy stuff). And after 10 minutes I got a funcional (albeit ugly version running on my home server). My objectives were:

Don't use too complicated stuff (as I intented to design at the beginning)
Use Vim
Use MD (I love MD)
make it interesting (use Rust and other cool stuff; learn it on the fly)

That said, please bear with any mistakes my unconscious self may have made. I plan to clean up this project to ensure that setting up your blog is a matter of minutes.

If you find your work (or parts of it) and it's not being properly used (wrong use of the license for instance), please refer to hello@itsgerard.com.

TheJarX/videas_blog