Blogging codes?

[EdgyRabbid]

Hello!

I have a journal and a blog, and theyre both made pretty simply, and I don't like it. I would like something more.. dynamic, but still easy to edit.

Do any of you guys know of a code like that? Or a service I could emend on my personal site?

[Dan Q]

It looks like right now you're keeping all your journal entries in one long page, then using CSS to show or hide them with the clever [id]:target trick. But it sounds like you'd like something more-sophisticated, perhaps with separate pages for each post? (Which will be helpful when you've got loads of posts!)

You could, of course, just make separate files for each post and link to each of them just like you do with all the pages you've already made. The big downside with that is that if you want to change something that's on just one of them, like the flames in the footer... then you have to change all of them. That's a drag! So I'm assuming you're looking to avoid that!


Broadly-speaking, there's two places the work can be done: (1) on the webserver, or (2) on your computer.

There are smart and helpful people here who can help with either! Or both! But here's the very basics so you know what you're talking about:

Doing it on the server

Doing it on the webserver will require that your server will let you run a server-side programming language like PHP. This would mean that you could do something like keeping each blog post in its own file, and then having some PHP code that listed them all, or showed the one the visitor asked for.

So when somebody goes to https://edgyrabbid.space/Blog, then instead of getting index.html, they get index.php. And instead of containing all of your blog posts, index.php contains some code that gets run on the server to make a list of all the other files and then make a list of links. And each link goes to a different address, e.g. something like https://edgyrabbid.space/Blog/show-post.php?post=2025-10-16 or something, where that bit at the end tells the code in show-post.php which post to display.

This means that adding a new post just means uploading one new file to the server. The code will automatically find it and link it from the list. And if you want to change the design of ALL your blog posts, you can: just change show-post.php.

It might also be possible to do it on the server with some imaginative use of JavaScript, frames, or similar. Not quite as slick, and not quite so much can be automated, but an option.

Doing it on your computer

If you can't, or don't want to, run code on the server, you might look at a Static Site Generator. These are tools that run on your own computer. You give them a pile of files (e.g. with one for each blog post with just the HTML for that post in them and maybe some metadata list their titles), they give you a different pile of files (e.g. one that is a list of links to blog posts, one for each blog post, and so on).

There are lots of different Static Site Generators. 11ty is very popular. Hugo is very fast. I'm very partial to Jekyll. They've all got some dependencies and "set up" work involved, sadly, but there are helpful getting started guides and videos for most of them nowadays. And, of course, everybody here (I'll bet somebody's got some good tips!).


What exactly would your dream solution be? Feel free to point any anybody else's site and say "I want something like that!" If they're here, they can probably even tell you how they did it!

[EdgyRabbid]

Thanks for the response!

Right now, I'm looking for a blogging system thats like on https://melonking.net/melon?z=/frames/thoughts ! Where are the posts all on the same page...

HOWEVER, I would like only for the first paragraph to be readable on the page.. and instead I would like a "read more" button where visitors can click on the button and read the rest of the post. Is there a way to do this through PHP?

[Melooon]

I'm looking for a blogging system thats like on https://melonking.net/melon?z=/frames/thoughts

My blog is made with TextPattern and its a PHP blogging system/content management system - as far as PHP systems go I totally recommend it (especially as an alternative to the cursed WordPress). You don't need to know any PHP to use it, but you do need to learn a little bit of Textpatterns own internal tags system if you wanna make custom layouts and pages (I will not help with this since ive forgotten it all ). Their documentation is very good though and their forum has some very kind and helpful people.

You also need a place to host PHP sites since you cant do that on neocities - somewhere like Namecheap offer that and it'll be about 5 euro a month, plus you need your own domain name.

[EdgyRabbid]

Not a problem lol. I have my own domain now! With a custom server, hosted somewhere in Europe!

This self hosting choice was the best I've ever made, now I don't have to jump through 10 hoops just to make a blogging systhem! And no storage limit!

Thanks Meloon!

[EdgyRabbid]

Alright, update!

So none of the PHP downloaders seem to work on my side. Ive tried all the examples but when they ask me to instal something all i get is a script that doesnt run anything. Do i need software to run it? If so then that wasnt included in any if the blog genarators i found. All i want is a simple blog code and its turning out to be so complicated 

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

So none of the PHP downloaders seem to work on my side.

How do you try to run them? PHP needs to run on a web-serve that supports it (like Apache) - so you can't run them on your computer (unless you install a webserver on it, which is a possibility), but they should work once you uploaded them to your server and then open them with your webbrowser.

[Dan Q]

So here's the skinny about What I Wish I'd Known The First Time I Used PHP (which'll have been about 1998, but it's still basically the same):

You have a webserver hosting a domain, e.g. awesomesite.com. You can put a file on it, e.g. mydog.html. Now, when somebody goes to http://awesomesite.com/mydog.html, your web server sends the contents of that file to the user's browser. Then the user's browser says "hey, this is HTML: I know what do to with this", and renders a page. Simple!

But you might also have a file called mycat.php. Your web server has (hopefully) been properly configured so that when it sees a .php file, it doesn't just send the contents to the user. Instead, it runs the PHP parser which looks inside the file for blocks of code that look like this:

Code

<?php
$roll = rand( 1, 6 );
echo "I rolled a die and got a {$roll}!";
?>

Wherever the PHP parser finds those special <?php ... ?> blocks, it (a) runs the code inside them, and (b) removes those blocks from the output (instead replacing them with anything that is output in them, e.g. by the "echo" command.

So maybe your mycat.php contains this:

Code

<p>
  My cat loves to play with dice.
</p>
<p>
  <?php
  $roll = rand( 1, 6 );
  echo "I rolled a die and got a {$roll}!";
  ?>
</p>
<p>
  Maybe you can play a game with my cat next time you visit?
</p>

Unlike JavaScript, your visitor never gets to see the PHP code. They don't know if your (cat's) die is loaded! They only get to see the text/HTML that is produced as a result of running it. So in this case, the HTML their browser gets might look like this:

Code

<p>
  My cat loves to play with dice.
</p>
<p>
  I rolled a 4!
</p>
<p>
  Maybe you can play a game with my cat next time you visit?
</p>

That should give you enough to try it for yourself. Give this a go:

1. Make a file called mycat.php and put some HTML and PHP code in it (the example in the middle of this post will do). Make sure you save it with a .php extension!
2. Upload that onto your web server.
3. Visit its URL e.g. http://awesomesite.com/mycat.php


If you see a different random number each time, you're all set! Everything's working! Hit "View Source" in your browser and see that you DON'T see any of the PHP code. Refresh a few times and see a different number each reload!

If you see the PHP code when you "View Source", then something's wrong. Maybe your webserver isn't configured to run the PHP parser on your PHP files? Or maybe you got the file extension wrong?

Let us know how you get on, maybe even with a link to your gambling cat's page, and we'll see if we can help!

[EdgyRabbid]

Alright, so basically what happens is that i follow the instructions that were provided on some of the templates i was using. I went to the domain they asked me to go to, and all it did was download a java script file. I dont know if its supposed to be doing that or something but when i open the JS file nothing happens.

And PHP is supposed be working, my good friend Fifo is my host provider and edited my sever to run PHP, so im not sure whats missing.

[EdgyRabbid]

Update: I got it running!

https://edgyrabbid.space/blog/index.php?s=articles

The CSS isnt good lol, but it works way better than wordpress imo. I prefer this because i can edit the html! But i need to learn how to change the text...

[Dan Q]

Looks fantastic, well done! And I fully approve that you've got an RSS feed so it's easy to subscribe for updates. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it next!