Elixir blogging software

[AstonJ]

I’ve noticed we’ve got a few now - wonder if we can compile a list? This is a wiki - anyone at Trust Level 1 can edit

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#Mebe

###The Minimalistic Elixir Blog Engine

Mebe is a very simple blog engine written in Elixir using the Phoenix Framework. It aims to provide a simple, no-frills, programmer centric interface for writing posts.

NOTE: Mebe is still at an early stage of development. There are no releases so you will have to build it yourself and the user’s guide is still a work in progress. If you don’t want to spend time debugging crash traces, I don’t recommend trying it out just yet. If you do try it and find bugs, I will appreciate all reports either here in the comments or on the BitBucket project repository.

###How does it work?

Posts and pages of the blog are written in Markdown files that are saved to a preconfigured directory. On startup (and when refreshed), Mebe finds all Markdown files in the directory and parses them concurrently. Yearly, monthly and tag archives are automatically generated from the resulting page and post data. Finally, all the data is inserted into Erlang Term Storage (ETS), which is basically an in-memory key-value store. The data from ETS can then be served to the client very quickly.

Link: Mebe – The Minimalistic Elixir Blog Engine – Random Notes
by @Nicd

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#Blogit
Blogit is a blog engine back-end written in Elixir. It turns a repository (by default git repository), containing markdown files into streams of blog posts, which can be queried. Blogit supports blog configuration in YAML, including blog title, path to custom styles and images, etc.

There is a front-end implementation in Phoenix, which uses Blogit - BlogitWeb. It can be forked and configured to use any repository to build custom blog.

The blog for the Sofia University Elixir course runs on Blogit.

Link: https://github.com/meddle0x53/blogit
by @meddle

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#Sceopa
Sceopa is a free, open-source blogging platform designed for simplicity and ease of use.

Fast and responsive on all devices

• No javascript

• No custom fonts

• Minimal CSS

• Optimized for reading

• Large, clear text

• Minimal design, no distractions

• Designed for coders

• Inbuilt syntax highlighting

• Markdown support

• Open-source (GPL v3) on GitLab

Link: https://sceopa.com
Thread: Sceopa - an open source blogging platform
By @tyro

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I bet there are plenty of people in the same boat as me - wanting to get rid of their old Wordpress blogs!

[tmbb]

I think the critical deature here is self-hosted comments with some kind of spam protection. To host a static website with Disqus or something like that, you don’t need Elixir, you need Nginx or Apache (or even GitHub pages), and it will probably be even faster…

Until these solutions come with self-hosted comments (with easy-to-use spam protection), I don’t see how they are a big improvement on top of the 62749 static site generators that have already been written in other languages.

[AstonJ]

I’d only recommend self-hosting comments if you could add social media logins - people just feel more comfortable logging in with their Twitter or GH accounts to comment, rather than go through the process of signing up.

[tmbb]

Well, that’s a way of limiting spam, but my favourite blogs are the ones in which you don’t even have to login, like what wordpress does by default.

[AstonJ]

You still have to verify your email don’t you?

I would prefer to use Disqus for comments as it’s easier for everyone else and they have some anti-spam measures built in. Or, self-hosted if social media log-ins for comments and relatively good anti-spam measures

[Nicd]

Oh noes, Mebe was featured. It’s not really user friendly at the moment, I only made it for myself and the code is available for reference. But if someone is feeling adventurous, go for it (and ask me for help ).

I don’t see how they are a big improvement on top of the 62749 static site generators that have already been written in other languages

This is true, there are no different features at least in Mebe. But Elixir is fast enough that I didn’t need to write a static site generator, instead I could write a normal site. That was more fun for me and allowed me to learn the basics of Phoenix (could rewrite it in Plug actually). And at least the door is open in the future if I want to implement something dynamic.

As for Disqus, I used it because I have no interest in writing spam protection systems. And since the blog doesn’t have a database, I couldn’t have normal comments or registration of users easily.

[tyro]

Sceopa is very much a hobby project, the SSL certificate is out of date but I’ll update it this week.

[bobbypriambodo]

I hope this is on topic, but what is the reason you would want to host your blog yourself? I’ve stopped (re)creating my personal blog and turned into a hosted solutions like Medium. Seems like thinking about the hosting, the configurations, the styling and whatnots are counterproductive for me to actually blog.

I’ve recently thinking of switching to dev.to, it is hosted, uses markdown, has proper syntax highlighting for code, and the site is blazingly fast (like, super mega fast). The community around it is also amazing, my first cross-post got quite a bit nice reactions there. Still, just as Medium does, it lets you focus on actually writing stuff.

This is not to undermine the work that has been done by the folks here, though. You’re awesome!

[cpgo]

I really dislike medium. Way too heavy and slow for a blog and the comment system is a bit strange.

dev.to

Holy s…, that is fast indeed.

[AstonJ]

I hope this is on topic, but what is the reason you would want to host your blog yourself?

I’d want:

• To host on my own domain
• Not lose ownership of my content
• Customise the design
• Be able to transfer to another platform later

[Nicd]

Yeah, for me too it’s about running on my own site in my own way. I used to post on Google+ but I felt too reliant on some company’s goodwill to have my blog running and available for others. Making my own blog software was a learning exercise and a fun experience (it’s actually my third blog engine). It doesn’t detract me from blogging as I write very rarely anyway.

I totally understand why some others aren’t as interested in that, though.

[meddle]

I’ve been using Wordpress for some time and… the experience was terrible.

I thought of creating a phoenix blog, powered by git repo, containing markdown files, when we decided to have a blog for the Sofia University course. But also wanted to have my own…

So it turned into a blog engine (Blogit from above), which was/is driven by my ideas of what a tech blog should be. And I wanted to be very extensible/customizable. The effort to deploy and support it should be done by the person forking it, so it is very developer-oriented thingy.

I think it is related to personal preferences, but as @Nicd said : it’s about running my site on my own way, and if somebody forks it, they will run their site their own way.

Many people would prefer platform like medium or dev.io, but there will be a few who’ll want something similar to the above solutions.

So thank you @AstonJ for listing them, also thank you for helping me find my way in this forum.
Cheers to @Nicd and @tyro too, I’ll check Sceopa and Mebe too!

[setras]

Have a look at Firestorm http://www.firestormforum.org/. Haven’t used it but looks good

[AstonJ]

That’s a forum platform not a blog

[ckhrysze]

Also not quite a blogging platform, but we’re starting to see static site generators in Elixir as well. Obelisk seems to be the furthest along, but I certainly could have just missed others. There are enough for its own section in the Awesome Elixir list.

[AlchemistCamp]

You still have to verify your email don’t you?

I would prefer to use Disqus for comments as it’s easier for everyone else and they have some anti-spam measures built in.

Not by default. I usually hold the first comment from a new email address in moderation, and never verify email addresses.

As a commenter, self-hosted WP is a way nicer experience than Disqus (which forces you to log in).

[AstonJ]

@AlchemistCamp

Not by default. I usually hold the first comment from a new email address in moderation, and never verify email addresses.

But then anyone can send comments to your site and pretend to be someone else? :101:

[AlchemistCamp]

Yep. Guess you weren’t into blogs much in their heyday?

Back before FB sucked the life out of blogs, I often had 50 comment plus discussions on my blog with regulars and this would happen sometimes. It’s hard to impersonate another poster without knowing their email since that’s the field that determines the user image, but some tried.

There was one notorious sockpuppet in particular that I remember from 2007 who kept trying to pretend to be new users who agreed with his primary identity. Wordpress logs the IP and some other information along with comments much like Wikipedia does though, so it’s not too hard to tell. Ultimately, just holding the first comment from a new email address was enough to eliminate all the problematic commenters I ever encountered.

[alvises]

I was searching for a blogging platform made with Phoenix, and found this topic. In the meanwhile, did anything come out? Ghost.io has a good success, is pretty neat but I found it quite limited.

Do you think it makes sense a new blogging platform in phoenix in 2019 ? (maybe using things like presence, websockets for some engaging feature)

BTW I don’t like using wordpress