EasyBlog

This blog system generates a pure static blog website through build tools. With the help of GitHub Pages, you can have a personal blog for free in 5 minutes. It has the following features:

Demo: NilTor's Blog: https://blog.dusi.dev/

🎖️Features

Deploy with Github Page

Fork and configure GitHub Page

  1. Click the Fork button and create your own repository. Uncheck Copy the main branch only.
  2. Go to your own GitHub repository, click Actions, and enable workflows.
  3. Click Settings, find Pages configuration, and select GitHub Actions in Build and deployment.

Configuration

You can configure the basic information of the blog through webinfo.json in the root directory, as shown below:

{
  "Name": "Niltor Blog", // Blog name, displayed at the top navigation of the homepage
  "Description": " for freedom",// Description, displayed in the middle of the top of the homepage
  "AuthorName": "Ater", // Author name, displayed in the blog list
  "BaseHref": "/blazor-blog/", // Subdirectory
  "Domain": "https://aterdev.github.io" // Domain name, used for generating sitemap, leave blank if not generated
}

When you use Github Page or deploy using IIS sub-application, you need to adjust BaseHref. It is usually your project name or subdirectory name.

Important

Note that the / at the end of BaseHref is required.

If you have configured a custom domain name and are not using a subdirectory, set BaseHref to /.

After modification, commit the code, GitHub will trigger Action to automatically build.

Write a blog

Please use any markdown editor you are used to write a blog, the only requirement is to put the blog content in the Content directory. You can create multi-level directories under this directory.

Publish a blog

You only need to commit the code normally, github action will automatically build and finally publish your blog. After the publication is successful, you can open your GitHub Page to view.

Deploy to other services

If you don't use Github Page, you can also easily deploy it to other services. The core steps only require two steps.

Generate static content

The BuildSite project is used to convert markdown to html. Please execute in the root directory:

dotnet run --project .\src\BuildSite\ .\Content .\WebApp Production

Where .\Content is your markdown storage directory and .\WebApp is the generated static site directory.

Upload to your server

Copy all files in WebApp to your server.

Tip

The publishToLocal.ps1 script in the root directory can automatically complete the build and generate operations. The final content will be in the WebApp directory in the root directory.

If you use automated deployment, please refer to the scripts in .github/workflows.

Update

The upstream code update is based on the dev branch. You can merge the dev branch into your dev branch to get the latest code updates.

main is the default branch for building and publishing. Please do not merge it into your main branch.

It is recommended to use dev or your own branch to write blogs and customize content, and then merge it to the main branch to trigger automatic build.

Custom Develop

After forking, you will have all the custom permissions, because all the source codes are already in your own repository.

The core project is BuildSite, which is used to generate static files, including converting markdown files to html files.

Note

It is recommended to create your own branch for custom development content, which is convenient for subsequent merging.

Development Environment

The BuildSite project is a .NET project. You need to install .NET SDK 8.0.

Additionally, you can install (optional):

Running the Project

  1. Preview the project:
    1. Open the terminal, execute http-server in the WebApp directory, and then open http://127.0.0.1:8080 in your browser.
  2. Generate static content:
    1. Execute dotnet run --project ./src/BuildSite ./Content ./WebApp in the root directory to generate the latest static content.
    2. Alternatively, run the build.ps1 script in the root directory.
  3. Refresh the browser to see the latest generated content.

Tip

If you use Tailwindcss, you can execute npx tailwindcss -o ./css/app.css --watch in the WebApp directory. If you use Typescript, you can execute tsc -w in the WebApp directory.

Customizing the Homepage Content

The homepage content template is located at src\BuildSite\template\index.html.tpl. It includes the following variables:

Template Variable Description
@{BaseUrl} Base path
@{Name} Blog name
@{Description} Description
@{blogList} Blog list
@{siderbar} Sidebar content: categories and archives

You can modify the layout and style of the homepage according to your own ideas.

Note

Pay attention to the id attributes in the tags. The js script relies on these id identifiers. If you modify these identifiers, you must also modify the js script.

The homepage content includes the search and category filtering functions of the blog. The functional code is in WebApp\js\index.js.

For customizing the blog list and category list, you can refer to the GenBlogListHtml and GenSiderBar methods in the HtmlBuilder.cs file in the BuildSite project.

We will provide more flexible customization methods in the future.

Customizing the Blog Post Page

The blog post content template is located at src\BuildSite\template\blog.html.tpl. It includes the following variables:

Template Variable Description
@{BaseUrl} Base path
@{Title} Page title
@{content} Blog content
@{toc} Table of contents for secondary titles

You can modify the style of the blog post page through WebApp/css/markdown.css and define the logic through WebApp/js/markdown.js.

Customizing Code Highlighting

This project uses ColorCode to format the code content in markdown. ColorCode uses regular expressions to match the code content. If you need to define code highlighting, you need to:

  1. Add or modify regular expression rules. You can find the corresponding language definition in the ColorCode.Core/Compilation/Languages directory. If it does not exist, you can add new language support.
  2. If it is a newly added language, you need to load it in ColorCode.Core/Languages.cs.

Important

If you modify the code in the BuildSite project, you need to regenerate the static website to see the latest.