日志 (rì zhì - journal)

Hello and welcome to our show!

日志 (pronounced similar to Rural Juror from 30 Rock) is a simple blogging platform that only requires javascript in the browser and static HTML hosting (and, of course, the viewer to be using a modern browser).

The markdown engine is showdown if you are curious.

Why?

Why? Well, for some problems applications like Wordpress are overkill. For Wordpress and it's kin, you need to have PHP setup, a database setup, you need to update the code and plugins all the time, etc etc. If you are just putting up a simple or temporary site, that process can be a drag.

I've grown fond of projects like jekyll. They let you write static markdown files using any text editor you like, and then generate a static blog from your markdown files. The only problem with Jekyll and the like is you have to install and run the code to generate the blogs -- ruby in the case of jekyll.

What if you want to just have a simple blog, write posts using your iPad (or other tablet), and host the content directly on Dropbox? The iPad has a lot of nice text editors, but you can't install ruby.

How about if you're really lazy, and just want a mildly dynamic project page on Github? Or what if Creed asks you to setup a blog for him.

The only thing you need to use 日志 is a place put HTML files, and a way to upload your markdown files.

Installation

Upload all the files to a hosting location - Dropbox, S3, a traditional hosting provider, etc.

Once uploaded browse to the index.html file. For example: http://example.com/herp/index.html.

To change a page, or to view a post, you add the location 'after the hash'. So, for example, to view the default post you'd view http://example.com/herp/index.html#posts/2014/da-jia-hao and to view a page you'd browse to http://example.com/herp/index.html#pages/about. The index.html#<directories>/<file> is how you create internal links.

Writing a New Post

To create a new post, you simply create a new file in the posts directory and give it an md extension. Then, using markdown syntax, write an amazing post.

At the top of the file you can add meta data. For example, to change the title of the page, add the header:

title: my title here

to the very top of the markdown file.

Since there is no server side code running, there isn't a reliable way to create a list of your current posts. After you write a new post, and are ready to publish, you need to update the pages/index.md file to point to the new file.

For example, if you added a post titled 'my-new-post.md' in the posts/2014 directory you would add the following line to the pages/index.md file:

* [First Post](#posts/2014/da-jia-hao)
* [Next Post](#posts/2014/my-new-post)

The link will then show up on your index page.

Problems

It seems to work well, but I just felt like writing this one Saturday. It's kind of stream of consciousness coding. I wouldn't use this for anything incredibly important.
The client has to have Javascript turned on or the site wont work at all (just the index page will load)
Each page load makes several requests back to the server (to load other markdown files)

Quick Tour

There are three places you may want to add and / or update markdown files. In the posts directory you put anything you consider a post, and pages is where you put anything you consider a page. (This layout is only a suggestion as you can load markdown files from whatever directory you like).

.
├── assets                   <= 'system' files
│   └── js
│       ├── rizhi.js
│       └── showdown-0.3.1
├── index.html
├── pages                    <= your pages go here
│   ├── about.md
│   └── index.md
├── posts                    <= posts go here
│   └── 2014                 <= organized however you want
│       └── da-jia-hao.md
└── themes                   <= if you want to change the L&F
    └── default
        ├── footer.md
        ├── header.md
        └── style.css

robrohan / rizhi