About LnBlog

LnBlog is a weblog system that is written in PHP and stores data in text files. It aims to provide a rich feature set with maximum flexibility while remaining low on requirements.

Documentation

Full documentation is available at the LnBlog website. It can be viewed online at the following URL:
https://www.skepticats.com/lnblog/documentation/

You may also download a copy of the documentation for local viewing at the following location:
https://www.skepticats.com/lnblog/content/download/lnblog_docs.zip

Requirements

LnBlog needs a web server with PHP 7.0 or greater installed and the ability to read and write to the local filesystem. Support for the CURL, gettext, and either mime-magic or fileinfo extensions is helpful, but no non-standard extensions are required.

No database is needed and no particular web server is required. LnBlog is tested with Apache running on Windows and Linux. Other web servers and operating systems should work, but are not actively tested.

Installation

There are two ways to install: from the distribution ZIP file downloaded from the LnBlog webpage (recommended) or from source, i.e. the cloned Git repository.

Installing from zip archive

To install the ZIP file distribution, simply extract the ZIP archive and upload the resulting folder to the publicly accessible portion of your web server. After that, open a web browser go to the URL corresponding to that location. This will start the graphical configuration process. You will be prompted to confirm path information and create an initial user account, after which you will be taken to the administration page where you can create more users, create blogs, and set other options.

Building from source

To build LnBlog from source you will need the following installed on your system:

Git
PHP
Composer
Node.JS/NPM

To get the latest code and create an installable build, run the following commands from the console:

git clone https://github.com/pageer/lnblog.git
cd lnblog
composer install --dev
npm install
vendor/bin/phing -Dversion='latest' build

This will create the directory build/LnBlog-latest/, which contains the same files as the zip archive distribution described above. You can copy that directory to the web-accessible portion of your web server and follow the installation instructions above.

It is also possible to put the directory pulled from Git directly on your web server. This makes it easy to pull updates to the code at will. However, you will have to manually handle changes to third-party dependencies. (Note: This works fine, but is not recommended because you will need to install dev tools in your production environment. But if you're fine with that, then go for it.) You can do this by running the following:

composer instal --dev
npm install
vendor/bin/phing client-local

When pulling new changes, you may have to repeat these steps if any of the external dependencies change. (Look for changes in composer.lock, packages.json, or build.xml.)

Upgrading

To upgrade an existing LnBlog installation, extract the new ZIP archive (or create a new build from source) and upload the folder to your server. You should then rename your old LnBLog directory to, e.g., LnBlog-old, and rename the new one in its place (i.e., give it the same name the old version had). If your userdata directory is contained inside the LnBlog directory, you should move it from the old version to the new one. (Note: it is now recommended to keep your userdata directory alongside the code direcory, not inside it.) You will also need to copy the pathconfig.php from your old directory to the new one. This file contains the canonical URLs and locations of your userdata and all your blogs. The sequence of commands is roughly as follows:

cp LnBlog/pathconfig.php LnBlog-new/pathconfig.php
mv LnBlog LnBlog-backup
mv LnBlog-new LnBlog

Depending on the contents of the updated version, you may also need to upgrade your blog data. To do this, go to the main LnBlog site administration page, select your blog from the "upgrade blog" drop-down, and click "Upgrade". This will recreate the wrapper script files and perform any updates to the format of the data files. Repeat this for each of your blogs. You can also upgrade everything at once from the command line by running:

php cli.php --upgrade

Important note: It is always recommended to backup your blogs directories before upgrading. The upgrade process should be non-destructive, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Credits

Icons taken from Fam Fam Silk http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/

pageer / lnblog

readme