NanoBlogger User Manual

by n1xt3r (Kevin Wood)

The official guide to the NanoBlogger weblog engine.

Table of Contents

1.	Introduction
2.	Features
3.	Requirements
4.	Getting Started
5.	Settings and Configuration
6.	Managing Entries and Categories
7.	Templates
8.	About Plugins
9.	Writing Plugins
10.	Publishing
11.	Adding Support for Comments
12.	Importing Entries
13.	Tips and Tricks
14.	Credits

1. Introduction

NanoBlogger is a small weblog engine written in Bash for the command line. It uses common UNIX tools, such as cat, grep and sed to create static HTML content. It's free to use and modify under the GNU General Public License.

Synopsis

 
nb [-b blog_dir] [options]
        

2. Features

• intuitive command line interface
• highly configurable and script-able :)
• easy drafting, editing and management of entries
• archiving by category, year, month, and entry
• pagination
• permanent and navigational links
• templates and CSS style sheets for full control over layout
• placeholders for easy template manipulation
• support for multiple weblogs
• support for multiple categories
• support for relative and absolute links
• support for date manipulation of entries
• Atom syndication (comes with 1.0 format)
• RSS syndication (comes with RSS 2.0 and 1.0 formats)
• plugins for calendar, recent entries, weblog status, etc.
• plugins for text formatting (e.g. line breaks translate to HTML)
• global (nb.conf) and per-weblog (blog.conf) configuration
• intelligent update system - only updates relative files
• simple cache system for improved efficiency
• independent of java-script and server-side scripting (e.g. PHP)
• independent of external database (stores data in flat-files)
• multi-language support
• multi-platform portability (just Bash and the required commands)

cd [nb_dir]
./nb --blogdir [myblog_dir] --add
        

1. edit either nb.conf or $HOME/.nb.conf.
2. set BLOG_DIR to your weblog directory:
        BLOG_DIR="$HOME/public_html/[myblog_dir]"
        

5. Settings and Configuration

To edit the weblog's configuration invoke:

nb --blogdir [myblog_dir] --configure -u all
        

This opens blog.conf from the weblog directory for editing and updates the entire weblog.

Setting the Browser

The browser defaults to the BROWSER variable in your Bash environment, but falls back to "lynx", when no BROWSER is set. You can specify a different browser to use by overriding BROWSER in blog.conf or setting the BROWSER variable in your Bash environment. In Mac OS X, you would set this to "open".

Setting the Editor

The editor defaults to the EDITOR variable in your Bash environment, but falls back to "vi", when no EDITOR is set. You can specify a different editor to use by overriding EDITOR in blog.conf or setting the EDITOR variable in your Bash environment.

Setting the Date Format for New Entries

DATE_FORMAT specifies the date format to use for new entries. The default is to use the output from the date command. You can also specify the locale to be used for date command (see the variable DATE_LOCALE). You can specify additional command line arguments with DATE_ARGS, useful for specifying time in UTC. Please note that these settings have no effect on previous entries. Read the man pages of the date command to see how to customize the format of the date command's output.

Examples:

DATE_FORMAT="%m.%d.%Y %H:%M"
DATE_LOCALE="$LANG"
DATE_ARGS="-u"   

Setting the Timezone for Syndication Feeds

BLOG_TZD sets the timezone for your weblog's syndication feeds. The default is to set this automatically using, "%z", a non-standard extension of the date command. You'll have to set this manually, if the date command on your system doesn't support it or see if your system administrator will install GNU date for you.

Example:

BLOG_TZD="-0:500"
   

Setting the Encoding

BLOG_CHARSET sets the character encoding to be used for your weblog.

Example:

BLOG_CHARSET="iso-8859-1"

WARNING: If you have the Tidy plugin enabled, this setting will be overridden by Tidy. Please, refer to Tidy's documentation for setting the character encoding.

Setting the Mime Type

BLOG_MIMETYPE sets the mime type to be used for your weblog.

Example:

BLOG_MIMETYPE="text/html"
   

Setting the Web Address

BLOG_URL should be set as the full URL to your weblog excluding the index file and any preceding "/". This setting is required for absolute links and syndication feeds.

Example:

BLOG_URL="http://my-site.com/weblog"
   

Setting the Style Sheet

BLOG_CSS sets the style sheet to be used by your weblog. Style sheets are located in the styles directory.

Example:

BLOG_CSS="styles/nb_rusted.css"

Setting the Favorite Icon

BLOG_ICON sets the favorite icon to be used by your weblog. Favorite icons are located in the images directory.

Example:

BLOG_ICON="images/favicon.ico"

Toggling the use of Absolute Links

ABSOLUTE_LINKS enables the generation of absolute links. Defaults to "0", disabled.

Toggling display of Directory's Index File in Links

SHOW_INDEXFILE toggles display of a directory index file in links. Defaults to "1", enabled.

Setting the Author's Name

BLOG_AUTHOR can be used to set the author's name, the default is to set the author's name using the common USER variable. Setting BLOG_AUTHOR will override this behavior.

Setting the Maximum Number of Entries to Display on the Main Page

MAX_ENTRIES sets the maximum number of entries that get displayed on the main page. Defaults to "10".

Setting the Maximum Number of Entries to Display for Each Page

MAX_PAGE_ENTRIES sets the maximum number of entries to display for each page. Defaults to "$MAX_ENTRIES".

Setting the Default Text Formatting

ENTRY_FORMAT specifies the default text formatting to use for an entry. Defaults to "raw".

Toggling the Display of Permanent Links

PERMALINKS toggles the display of an entry's permanent link. The default is to display permanent links.

Toggling the Building of Entry Archives

Setting ENTRY_ARCHIVES to equal "1", enables the building of entry archives and reconfigures the links of the entries to point to their own archive page. Note that this will increase the rebuild time since more pages will have to be generated.

Special Category Archiving Preferences

CATARCH_DATATYPE determines the set of data to load for the category archives. There's two types of data that can be specified, "ALL" or "NOBODY".

ALL = full entry metadata (slow and bigger cache)
NOBODY = all except entry's BODY metadata (faster and smaller cache)
    

IMPORTANT: Please edit category_entry.htm accordingly.

Setting the Chronological Order

CHRON_ORDER specifies the chronological order of the weblog's archive - 0/1 = normal/reverse. Defaults to "1", reverse order.

Setting Actions for Previewing and Publishing

BLOG_PREVIEW_CMD and BLOG_PUBLISH_CMD may both be set to a custom command to run when invoked by their respective options, --preview and --publish.

Setting the Cache Preferences

MAX_CACHE_ENTRIES sets the maximum number of entries to store in the cache. Defaults to "$MAX_ENTRIES".

Setting BLOG_CACHEMNG to "0" disables automatic management of the cache. The cache may be managed manually using the --update-cache command line option.

Toggling Interactive Mode

BLOG_INTERACTIVE toggles interactive mode for your weblog and has the same effect as the --interactive command line option. The default is "0" for disabled, setting to "1" will toggle the mode back on.

Changing the File Type

NB_FILETYPE specifies the file type or rather the suffix for the generated files. The default is set to "html".

Changing the Default Query Mode

QUERY_MODE specifies the default query mode for listing entries and displaying them on the main page. Defaults to "$MAX_ENTRIES".

Plugin Configuration

PLUGINS_DIR specifies the directory where the main plugins are located. The default is set to $NB_BASE_DIR/plugins. When specifying PLUGINS_DIR to a non-default location, keep in mind that many sub-directories are expected to exist. It may be easier to start by copying the plugins directory and sub-directories to the desired location first.

USR_PLUGINSDIR specifies the directory where user plugins are located. The user plugins directory allows you to run your own plugins on top of the main plugins. It's strongly recommended that you duplicate the directory tree from the main plugins directory, then place your plugins accordingly throughout the tree. The default is set to $BLOG_DIR/plugins.

Global Configuration

NanoBlogger has it's own configuration file, $NB_BASE_DIR/nb.conf that holds settings which effect all weblogs. The global configuration file is read first meaning that settings in the weblog's configuration may override settings in $NB_BASE_DIR/nb.conf. This configuration is also looked for under the file, $HOME/.nb.conf.

Changing the Default Language of NanoBlogger

NB_LANG is a global configuration variable that sets the language definitions to load. The default is "en" for English

Example:

NB_LANG="en"
    

6. Managing Entries and Categories

Commands to manage entries and categories.

Managing Entries

Entry ID's

The latest entry added, will always have an ID of "1", entry's added before that will have ID's of higher values. An entry will have a different ID for each category it belongs in. When modifying entries from a category, ID's for both category and entry must be specified.

Drafting Entries

Creating a new draft:

nb [-b blog_dir] --draft draft.txt
    

Importing the draft as a new entry:

nb [-b blog_dir] --file draft.txt -a
    

Creating Entries

Adding a new entry:

nb [-b blog_dir] -a
        

Adding a new entry to a category:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c 1 -a
        

Setting title and author for new entry:

nb [-b blog_dir] -t "New Entry" -n [entry_author] -a
        

Setting title, author, and body for new entry:

nb [-b blog_dir] -t "New Entry" -n [entry_author] -T "This is my message." -a
        

Importing new entry from file:

nb [-b blog_dir] --file draft.txt -a

Listing Entries

Listing current entries:

nb [-b blog_dir] -l
        

Listing all entries:

nb [-b blog_dir] -l all
        

Listing entries for a category:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c 1 -l
        

Editing Entries

Editing the last entry created:

nb [-b blog_dir] -e 1
        

Editing an entry from a category:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c 1 -e 1
        

Editing multiple entries:

nb [-b blog_dir] -e 1,2,3
        

Moving Entries

Moving an entry to a category:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c 1 -m 1
        

Moving an entry to multiple categories:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c 1,2,3 -m 1
        

Moving multiple entries to a category:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c 1 -m 1,2,3
        

Deleting Entries

Permanently deleting an entry:

nb [-b blog_dir] -d 1
        

Permanently deleting multiple entries:

nb [-b blog_dir] -d 1,2,3
        

Deleting an entry from a category:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c 1 -d 1
        

Changing Entry's Date

Specifying a new entry's date using the TIMESTAMP metatag:

nb [-b blog_dir] --tag TIMESTAMP --tag-text "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" -a
    

Changing an old entry's date:

nb [-b blog_dir] --tag TIMESTAMP --tag-text "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" -e 2
     

Manually changing an entry's date:

1. nb [-b blog_dir] -e 2
2. TIMESTAMP: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
     

The date command must support the "-d" option for the date to follow the format set by "$DATE_FORMAT".

Managing Categories

Category ID's

Category ID's count up from "1". A category's ID remains constant until that category is deleted. Deleting a category will free up that category's ID for use by a new category upon creation.

Category Commands

Creating a new category:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c new -a
        

Setting the title for a new category:

nb [-b blog_dir] -t "New Category" -c new -a
        

Listing available categories:

nb [-b blog_dir] -l cat
        

Editing a category's title:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c 1 -t "News" -e cat
        

Deleting a category:

nb [-b blog_dir] -c 1 -d cat
        

7. Templates

Templates are located in the weblog's sub-directory, templates.

8. About Plugins

Plugins Framework

9. Writing Plugins

Tools for Developing Plugins

10. Publishing

Setting the Publish Command

The BLOG_PUBLISH_CMD variable allows you to set a command to publish your weblog. This can be as simple as an FTP command to upload files or a more complex set of tasks via a script.

Publishing Remotely

FTP, SSH (scp, sftp, etc.), RSYNC or WebDAV, are all methods that can be used to publish the weblog.

example: automating publishing with ftp and .netrc.

blog.conf:

BLOG_PUBLISH_CMD="ftp example.weblog.com"
 

.netrc:

machine example.weblog.com login foo password
RIGHT!
macdef init
passive on
prompt off
lcd ~/public_html/blog
mput *.*
cd archives
lcd archives
mput *
 

Publishing Locally

If you choose to publish locally, you'll probably want to disable the publish command. To do this you can set BLOG_PUBLISH_CMD to null. e.g. BLOG_PUBLISH_CMD=""

11. Adding Support for Comments

To add support for comments, you can use a PHP script called NanoBlogger Comments [1]. It's simple, features support for accounts, and is easy to install.

Integrating a comment system with your weblog requires editing the appropriate templates. Please see examples in blog.conf and templates.

12. Importing Entries

In order to import entries, data must first be converted to the NanoBlogger format.

The Format of an Entry

An entry file name is of the format:

YYYY-MM-DDTHH_MM_SS.txt
        

So a typical entry's file name would look something like this:

2004-06-25T22_24_37.txt
        

The format of an entry is made up of metadata tags. Most of the metadata tags are of the format TAG: VALUE, then a carriage return that separates one tag from the next. The order of the metadata tags are insignificant. The BODY tag is special and needs to be terminated by the END----- tag. By default the content of the BODY tag must contain valid HTML with all entities properly escaped.

Example of an entry's format:

TITLE: A New Entry
AUTHOR: foo
DATE: January 30 2004, 12:00 PM
DESC: keywords or a short, one line summary
FORMAT: raw
-----
BODY:
<p>This is my new entry ...</p>
END-----
        

Converting Entries

Before entries can be imported they must be converted to the correct format.

Steps to converting entries:

1. Convert each entry so they each contain the following metadata: TITLE, AUTHOR, DATE, DESC, FORMAT, BODY
2. The BODY metadata must be terminated by "END-----".
3. Rename each entry's file name to it's corresponding date and time.
        

If there's multiple entries it may be a good idea to automate all this with a script.

Updating the Weblog's Data Directory

The imported entries should be copied into the data directory of your weblog.
Update the weblog with the new entries:

nb [-b blog_dir] -u all
        

13. Tips and Tricks

Useful Editor's Commands

Create a new metafile:

nb [-b blogdir] --makefile somefile.txt

Import the metafile as a new weblog entry:

nb [-b blogdir] --file somefile.txt --add

or export the metafile as a new weblog page:

nb [-b blogdir] --makepage somefile.txt somefile.html

Please note that these tasks are easier when the editor supports a sub-shell or when you can suspend your editor from the active shell (assuming there is one).

Writing Metatags on the Fly

Metatags can be written on the fly. For example, text formatting can be set from the command line.

nb [-b blogdir] --tag FORMAT --tag-text "markdown" --makepage somefile.txt somefile.html
    

Set a Default Weblog Directory

By default you have to specify the weblog directory, but by setting BLOG_DIR, you won't have to. Edit nb.conf or $HOME/.nb.conf:

BLOG_DIR="/path/to/weblog"
    

Running User Plugins Exclusively

Set PLUGINS_DIR to "[weblog_dir]/plugins".

edit blog.conf

PLUGINS_DIR="$BLOG_DIR/plugins"
    

Adding Shell Scripting to Your Templates

It's possible to use command substitution in your templates, using one of the following forms:

        $(command)
or
        `command`
                

Add an Introduction to Your Weblog

Create a text file in your weblog directory called, "intro.txt". Edit the text file the way you like, then add the following to the main template:

$(< "$BLOG_DIR/intro.txt")
        

Integrating Parts of Your Weblog Into an Existing Web Site

Many parts of the weblog are stored and built in the parts directory. Say you already have a web site full of your own custom server-side scripts/includes, but you'd like to add a news section. This is where the "parts/index.html" file comes in. It contains all the most recent entries, so adding a news/diary/blog section is just a matter of adding the code to include "parts/index.html" into the page.

Other clever uses include combining NanoBlogger's static output with some PHP or Perl. For example, suppose you like to have some of the side links, such as recent entries. Using PHP, set your NB_FILETYPE to "php" and modify the appropriate templates to include the PHP code that extracts the data from the parts directory. One of the main advantages to this is not having to rebuild the entire weblog's archives, just to keep the links current.

Embedding Other Variables in the Templates

Any characters that are similar to the shell's variable or command substitution characters, will have to be escaped before they will work from the templates.

Example using variables in the PHP code:

<?php
\$VAR = array ();
echo "\\\$VAR=\$VAR";
php?>
     

14. Credits

Thanks to Adrien "ze" Urban, Paul Drain, Pavel Janik, and O.R.Senthil Kumaran for all the contributions and suggestions. Thanks to Bowie J. Poag, author of MicroBlogger [2], for the inspiration of this project.

1. http://nhw.pl/blg/articles/nbcom/
2. http://freshmeat.net/projects/microblogger