Haven

Haven is a private blog application built with Ruby on Rails. Write what you want, create accounts for people you want to share with, keep up with each other using built-in RSS.

Try out a live demo at https://havenweb.org/demo.html

The following are some motivating philosophies:

Open-source. MIT License
Privacy-first. This is for sharing with friends and family, not commercial endevors. If you want a blog for your company, you probably want to use WordPress or Ghost instead.
Easy to use. Built-in web interface for managing users, customizing the blog, and writing/editing posts with markdown and live-preview.
Low-bandwidth friendly. Images get downscaled to reduce page load times. No javascript frameworks. No ads or trackers.
Customizable. Add custom CSS or fonts.
No spam. There is no self-signup for users so there is no place for unauthorized users to impact your life.
Media support for images, videos, and audio.
Private RSS feeds for your friends to follow you.
Build-in RSS reader to follow your favorite blogs.

Deployment

AWS

Register an account with AWS, the included scripts deploy to an AWS EC2 instance
Buy a domain with AWS route 53, this is the domain that will point to the blog
Setup your AWS credentials: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-java/v1/developer-guide/setup-credentials.html
Clone this project onto your computer (tested with Mac OS Mojave and Ubuntu 18.04)
Go to the deploymentscripts folder
Execute ruby deploy-aws.rb <domain> "<email>"
- Put your email address in quotes, this email is used for registering your HTTPS certificate
Wait. Deployment can take 20 minutes.
The script will show you your login information, enjoy your blog
Note: if anything goes wrong, you can run ruby cleanup-aws.rb <domain> to tear down everything the script created
If you get this error: cannot load such file -- aws-sdk-ec2 (LoadError), then type gem install aws-sdk and try again

Raspberry Pi

Note, this requires a little bit more technical knowledge. You should know how to flash an SD card and how to use the tools ssh and scp. You should also be able to configure your own DNS and port forwarding. We're doing this fully headless, not plugging in a display or mouse/keybord to the Raspberry Pi.

Configure your DNS to point to your home IP address.
- If you're using AWS Route53 for your DNS, this script might be useful: https://github.com/havenweb/r53_dynamic_dns
Flash a micro SD card with Raspberry Pi OS Lite (May 2021)
- 32 bit: http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_lite_armhf/images/raspios_lite_armhf-2021-05-28/
- or 64 bit if you know what you're doing: https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_lite_arm64/images/raspios_lite_arm64-2021-05-28/
Enable SSH and Wifi: https://raspberrytips.com/raspberry-pi-wifi-setup/
Insert the card into the Pi, and turn it on
Make sure you can SSH to the Pi, then copy deploymentscripts/deploy-pi.sh from this repository to the Pi's home directory
- Note, the script assumes your default home directory of /home/pi and that you're using the default pi user.
Configure your home router to forward port 80 (http) and 443 (https) to the Raspberry Pi.
- You might also want/need to configure a static IP address for the Raspberry Pi.
SSH to the Pi and run: bash deploy-pi.sh DOMAIN "YOUREMAIL"
Wait. On the Raspberry Pi Zero W, installation can take over three hours.
The script will give you your initial login information, enjoy your new blog!
Note, there are no backups setup. You may want to backup the database (PostgreSQL) and uploaded images (/home/pi/simpleblog/storage).

Paid Hosting

Fully managed hosting of your personal Haven is available too, check out: https://havenweb.org/order.html

Docker

Docker deployment is a work-in-progress and untested. Feel free to checkout the local branch which has a Dockerfile you can experiment with.

Other Linux Systems

Given the differences between Linux platforms I can't give fool-proof deployment instructions for every platform but take a look at the two bash scripts in deploymentscripts/lib/bash/. They are the steps used for installing dependencies and the Haven application in the automated AWS deployment. There may be differences depending on your distribution.