https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg

Blogging with Org-mode for very lazy people
https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg

blog blog-engine blogging emacs lazy minimalistic orgdown orgmode python simple simplicity simplistic

Last synced: 6 days ago
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Blogging with Org-mode for very lazy people

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg
• Owner: novoid
• License: gpl-3.0
• Created: 2013-10-19T16:59:49.000Z (about 11 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2024-03-31T01:44:58.000Z (7 months ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-10-15T10:33:07.157Z (21 days ago)
• Topics: blog, blog-engine, blogging, emacs, lazy, minimalistic, orgdown, orgmode, python, simple, simplicity, simplistic
• Language: Python
• Homepage:
• Size: 4.67 MB
• Stars: 407
• Watchers: 14
• Forks: 34
• Open Issues: 53
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.org
  • License: license.txt

Awesome Lists containing this project

• my-awesome-github-stars - novoid/lazyblorg - Blogging with Org-mode for very lazy people (Python)

README

        
## -*- coding: utf-8;mode: org;  -*-

## This file is best viewed with GNU Emacs Org-mode: http://orgmode.org/

#+BEGIN_QUOTE

«A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing

left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.» ([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%25C3%25A9ry][Antoine de

Saint-Exupéry]])

#+END_QUOTE

* lazyblorg -- blogging with Org-mode for very lazy people

This is a web log (blog) environment for [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs][GNU Emacs]] with [[http://orgmode.org/][Org-mode]]

which generates static HTML5 web pages. It is much more superior to

any other Org-mode-to-blog-solution I have seen so far!

: <(All?) your Org-mode files>  --lazyblorg-->  static HTML pages

:                                                       |

:                                                       v

:                                  optional upload (shell) script

:                                                       |

:                                                       v

:                                                  your web space

There is [[http://orgmode.org/worg/org-blog-wiki.html][a list of similar/alternative Org-mode blogging projects]]

whose workflows seem really tedious to me.

See [[http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/49747/][my original post to the Org-mode ML]] for how this idea of lazyblorg

started in 2011.

This awesome piece of software is a sheer beauty with regard to:

- simplicity of creating a new blog entry

  - *I mean it*: there is no step which can be skipped!

    - add heading+content anywhere, add ID, tag, invoke lazyblorg

- integration into [[http://karl-voit.at/tags/pim/][my personal, published workflows]]

  - here, you have to either adapt my totally awesome workflows or you

    have to find alternative ways of doing following things:

    - linking/including image files or attachments in general (I use [[https://github.com/novoid/Memacs/blob/master/docs/memacs_filenametimestamps.org][this Memacs module]])

      - advantage of my method: I simply add an image file by typing

        ~tsfile:2014-03-03-this-is-my-file-name.jpg~ in

        double-brackets and I really don't care in which folder the

        file is currently located on my system

    - copying resulting HTML files to web-space (I do it using [[http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/][unison]]/rsync)

    - probably more to come

** DISCLAIMER: This is a personal project

I wrote lazyblorg to get a blogging system that works for me exactly

the way I need it. I did not write lazyblorg for the pleasure on the

coding process - I just wanted to get the resulting thing working in

order to be able to blog the way I want to blog.

Therefore, it's mostly *a works-for-me project*. *I won't add anything

that I don't use myself*.

For the same reason, *I won't accept pull requests for things like*:

- Features I don't use myself.

- Added complexity I don't want.

- Features or dependencies I don't understand completely.

- Stuff that might interfere with the way I'm using lazyblorg.

If you do want to adapt lazyblorg and implement your own features that

conflict with the things listed above, I'd like to see you creating a

fork of this project. If you drop me a line with a description how

your fork differs from the original, I'm glad to add it to this README

file.

If you think that your idea might be also a good one for me, you can

always hand in a pull request and I'll have a look if I'm willing to

add it. However, don't be disappointed if I don't. I want to keep the

time spent on lazyblorg at a minimum. My personal priority is visible

in [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/issues][the lazyblorg issues]] where I introduced tags for [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Apriohigh][high]] and [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Apriolow][low

priority]] things to implement.

** Target group

Lazy users of [[http://orgmode.org/][Org-mode]] who want to do blogging very easily and totally

cool.

Or simply wannabes. I'm perfectly fine with this as long as they use

lazyblorg.

** Other people using lazyblorg

Pages using lazyblorg are listed [[https://karl-voit.at/tags/lazyblorg/][on my personal tag page on

"lazyblorg"]]. Please do drop me a line when you want to get your page

added to the list.

Quote from [[https://seppjansen.com/2018/04/24/site-using-lazyblorg/][Sepp Jansen]]:

#+BEGIN_QUOTE

[...]

But when I revisited lazyblorg after studying the other packages, it

suddenly seemed like a better solution. After only a short time of

reading I figured out the entire templating and post generation

system. Although not the most elegant, it is super simple and easy to

understand. And those are my most important points.

The developer states that it is easy to configure and start building,

and is absolutely right.

In just a few hours I went from installing dependencies to having a

fully working website, including some layout and CSS customization.

The included HTML and CSS is easy to modify so I could (lazily) make

the site look like I wanted it to without too much digging in many

little files. I even managed to make it look a lot like my old site

without too much effort! Lazyblorg really lives up to its name!

[...]

I really like lazyblorg, and I'll happily manage [[https://seppjansen.com/][this website]] with it

for as long as possible.

#+END_QUOTE

** Skills necessary

- modifying configuration settings, e.g., in script files

- optional: creating scheduled tasks (cronjob, ...) if you

  are a *really* lazy one (and if you trust lazyblorg to do its job in

  the background)

** System requirements

:PROPERTIES:

:CREATED:  [2014-03-14 Fr 13:24]

:END:

lazyblorg is written in *Python 3*.

Development platform is Debian GNU/Linux.

So with any decent GNU/Linux you should be fine.

It might work on OS X but I never tried it so far.

I definitely does not work with Microsoft Windows.

Although a programmer can add a couple of ~os.path.thisorthat()~ here and there

and it should be good to go.

Please consider sending a pull-request if you are fixing this issue.

Thanks!

** Version and Changelog

:PROPERTIES:

:CREATED:  [2014-03-14 Fr 13:28]

:END:

Currently (2019-10-23), I consider lazyblorg in beta-status with

version 0.96 or so.

I don't maintain a specific changelog. However, when there are

substantial changes to lazyblorg, you will find [[https://karl-voit.at/tags/lazyblorg/][a blog article tagged

with "lazyblorg"]]. Use an RSS/Atom aggregator to follow the blog.

** Why lazyblorg?

*Minimum effort* for blogging.

And: your blog entries can be written *anywhere in your Org-mode

files*. They will be found by lazyblorg. :-)

Further advantages are listed below.

** Example workflow for creating a blog entry

1. write a blog entry *anywhere* in your Org-mode files

   - With lazyblorg, you can, e.g., write a blog article about an

     event as a sub-heading of the event itself!

2. tag your entry with ~:blog:~

3. add an unique ID in the PROPERTIES drawer

   - You might want to use a package that automatically generates

     unique IDs to your headings (I don't).

   - You might want to take a look [[http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/16199][at this solution using file or

     directory variables]].

4. set the state of your entry to ~DONE~

   - make sure that a ~:LOGBOOK:~ drawer entry will be created that

     contains the time-stamp

An example blog entry looks like this:

: ** DONE An Example Blog Post           :blog:lazyblorg:software:

: CLOSED: [2017-06-18 Sun 00:16]

: :PROPERTIES:

: :ID: 2017-07-17-example-posting

: :CREATED:  [2017-06-17 Sat 23:45]

: :END:

: :LOGBOOK:

: - State "DONE"       from "NEXT"       [2017-06-18 Sun 00:16]

: :END:

:        […]

: Today, I found out that…

That's it. lazyblorg does the rest. It feels like magic, doesn't it? :-)

** Advantages

These things make a blogger a happy one:

*No other Org-mode blogging system* I know of is able to process blog

entries which are *scattered across all your Org-mode documents*

except the usual org-export-based approaches.

*No other Org-mode blogging system* I know of is able to generate a

blog entry with that *minimum effort* to the author.

You do not need to maintain a specific Org-mode file that contains you

blog posts only. [[http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/03/07/BNotes][*Create* blog posts]] *anywhere* in between your notes,

todos, contacts, ...

And there are some technological advantages you might consider as well:

- You don't need to write or correct HTML code by yourself.

- produces static, state-of-the-art HTML5

  - it's super-fast on delivery to browsers

  - very low computing requirements on your web server: minimum of server load

- No in-between format or tool.

  - Direct conversion from Org-mode to HTML/CSS.

  - dependencies have the tendency to cause problems when the

    dependent tools change over time

  - lazyblorg should be running fine for a long time after it is set

    up properly

- Decide by yourself how and where you are hosting your blog files

  and log files.

- you will find more advantages when running and using lazyblorg - I

  am very confident about that ;-)

** Disadvantages

Yes, there are some disadvantages. I am totally honest with you since we

are becoming close friends right now:

- lazyblorg *re-generates the complete set of output pages on every run*

  - this will probably changed in a future release (to me: no high priority)

  - most of the time this is not an issue at all

    - if pages are generated on a different system as the web server

      runs on, performance is a minor issue

    - if you don't have thousands of pages, this will not take long

- lazyblorg is implemented in Python:

  - Its Org-mode parser supports *only a (large) sub-set of Org-mode syntax*

    and features.

    - Basic rule: use *an empty line between two different syntax

      elements* such as paragraphs, lists, tables, and so on.

    - Whenever I think that an additional Org-mode syntax element is

      needed for my blog, I start thinking of implementing it

    - I am using Pandoc as a fall-back for all other Org-mode syntax

      elements which works pretty fine

    - For a list of general Org-mode parsers please [[http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tools/][read this page]]

- lazyblorg is using state-of-the art HTML5 and CSS3

  - No old HTML4.01 transitional stuff or similar

  - Results might not be compatible with browsers such as Internet

    Explorer or mobile devices.

    - tell your Internet Explorer friends that they should do

      themselves a favor and switch to a real browser

- You have to accept the one-time setup effort which requires

  knowledge of:

  - using command-line tools

  - modifying configuration files

  - summary: getting this beautiful thing to work in your environment

** Features

#+BEGIN_QUOTE

«Technology develops from the primitive via the complex to the

simple.»

#+END_QUOTE

([[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint-Exup%25C3%25A9ry][Antoine de Saint-Exupéry]]; note: lazyblorg is currently "primitive"

but with a great outlook up to the status of being simple)

Here is a selection of features of lazyblorg which helps you to blog

efficiently:

- Converts Org-mode To HTML5: lazyblorg supports [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Orgmode-Elements][a (large sub-)set of

  syntax elements of Org-mode]]

  - also see FAQs for "What Org-mode elements are supported by

    lazyblorg?"

- Different [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Page-Types][page types]] allow you to create:

  1. articles related to a specific date ([[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Temporal-Pages][temporal pages]])

     - Those articles are published and hardly updated.

  2. articles not related to a specific date ([[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Persistent-Pages][persistent pages]])

     - Frequent updates or the absence of any day-relation makes this

       page type very sexy to use.

  3. articles describing a tag you are using ([[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Tag-Pages][tag pages]])

     - Yes, with lazyblorg, you are (optionally) able to explain how

       you are using a certain tag. You can link your most important

       tag-related articles and so forth. Most systems don't offer any

       possibility to communicate the meaning of the tags used.

  4. the [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Entry-Page][entry page]] of your blog

     - You gotta give them a starting page ;-)

  5. the [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Templates][templates]] which are used to generate your blog pages

     - Hooray, you are able to define all templates of your blog

       within Org-mode as well. No need to edit source code here.

       Isn't this great?

- To efficiently notify users of new articles or changes to existing

  articles, lazyblorg generates [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Feeds][RSS/ATOM feeds]].

- Really fast to use [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Links#linking-other-blog-articles-internal-links][linking to other blog articles]] using their ID property.

- At the bottom of each article, there is a list of related articles

  that back-link to here.

- You can very easily [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Images][embed image files]] with automatically scaling to

  their desired width

  - This feature is hardened against image file renaming and broken

    links because of moving images files to different folders

  - Users of [[https://github.com/novoid/Memacs][Memacs]] do have advanced possibilities here as well

  - An optional image cache directory holds previously resized image

    file and therefore prevents resizing effort for each run.

- For navigating through the blog articles I do recommend using the

  [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Tag-Pages][tags]]. Articles related to one topic share common tags whereas a

  date-oriented archive has only very limited use. The tag cloud which

  is on the [[http://karl-voit.at/tags/][tag overview page]] offers a quick overview of your most used

  tags.

- There is a search feature which brings you to the content by

  searching for keywords or phrases.

- Easy embedding of [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Embedding-External-Content][external content]] such as Tweets or YouTube videos.

- You can exclude content from being published with various features:

  1. [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Comments][Comment lines]]

  2. Mark an article/heading as hidden [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Headings#headings-within-a-blog-article][using the tag NOEXPORT]]

  3. The [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Headings#tag-hidden][hidden tag]] does publish an article but hides it from

     the entry page, navigational pages, and the feeds. This way, you

     can publish pages who can only be access by people knowing its URL.

- Reading time estimations (multi-language) following [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/issues/47][this feature request]]

** FAQs

See https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/FAQs

* Installing and Starting with lazyblorg

I am using it for [[http://Karl-Voit.at][my own blog]] and therefore it gets more and more

ready to use as I add new features.

What's working so far:

- parsing a large sub-set of Org-mode

  - most important: the parser requires a blank line between different

    Org mode elements

- parsing the HTML templates

- generating HTML5 pages with [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Org-mode-Elements][a sub-set of the sub-set of the Org-mode

  syntax elements]]

** External dependencies

The number of external dependencies is kept at a minimum.

This is a list of the most important dependencies:

- [[http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/][Werkzeug]]

  - for sanitizing path components

  - I installed it on Debian GNU/Linux with ~sudo apt-get install python3-werkzeug~

- pickle

  - object serialization

  - most likely: should be part of your Python distribution

- pypandoc

  - some Org-mode syntax elements are being converted using [[http://pandoc.org/][Pandoc]] and

    its Python binding [[https://github.com/bebraw/pypandoc][pypandoc]]

  - you can get it via ~sudo apt-get install pandoc~ and ~sudo pip

    install python3-pypandoc~

  - *Note:* Debian GNU/Linux 8 (Jessie) comes with a Pandoc version

    [[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=800701][which is has bugs]]. Please install a more recent version. I

    upgraded to ~pandoc-1.15.1-1-amd64.deb~ from:

    http://pandoc.org/installing.html

- [[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/opencv-python][opencv-python]]

  - lazyblorg scales embedded images according to the HTML export attributes

  - Install using =sudo apt-get install python3-opencv=

- [[http://sass-lang.com/][Sass]] (optional) if you want to generate your CSS from the scss-file

- [[https://github.com/novoid/orgformat][orgformat]]

  - This is my library that provides basic utility functions when

    working with Org mode strings

All other libraries should be part of a standard Python distribution.

If you don't want to install the dependencies via package management,

you can use the python way from =requirements.txt=:

: pip install -r requirements.txt

Running tests also requires `pytest`.

** How to Start

1. Get the source

   - ~git clone https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg.git~ or

     [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/archive/master.zip][download current version as ZIP file]]

2. Adapt ~config.py~ to meet your settings.

3. Do a technological test-drive

   - start: ~lazyblorg/example_invocation.sh~

   - this should work with GNU/Linux (and most probably OS X)

   - if not, there is something wrong with the set-up; maybe missing

     external libraries, wrong paths, ...

4. Study, understand, and adopt the content of [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/blob/master/example_invocation.sh][example_invocation.sh]]

   - with this, you are able to modify command line parameters to meet

     your requirements

   - if unsure, ask for help using ~lazyblorg.py --help~

5. Get yourself an overview on *what defines a lazyblorg blog post* and

   write your own blog posts. A (normal temporal) blog article consists of:

   1. A (direct) tag has to be ~blog~

      - Sorry, no tag inheritance. Every blog entry has to be

        explicitly tagged.

   2. You have to add an unique ~:ID:~ property

   3. The entry has to be marked with ~DONE~

   4. A ~:LOGBOOK:~ entry has to be found with the time-stamp of

      setting the entry to ~DONE~

      - in [[https://github.com/novoid/dot-emacs][my set-up]], this is created automatically

   5. Get yourself familiar on the sub-set of Org-mode syntax you can use with lazyblorg

      - *Always put an empty line between different syntax elements*

        such as a heading and the next paragraph, normal text and a

        list or a table, and so forth.

      - You should not get a disaster if you are using elements

        lazyblorg is not optimized for. The result might disappoint

        you, that's all.

      - However, "unknown" Org-mode elements are automatically converted

        through pandoc as a fall-back.

6. OPTIONAL: Write your own CSS file

   - you can [[http://Karl-Voit.at/public_voit.css][take a look on mine]] if you do not care that I am not

     really into Web design :-)

   - please replace hard-coded URL to CSS file in

     [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/blob/master/templates/blog-format.org][lazyblorg/templates/blog-format.org]] and link it to your CSS file

7. OPTIONAL: Adopt the blog template

   - default template is defined in

     [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/blob/master/templates/blog-format.org][lazyblorg/templates/blog-format.org]]

8. OPTIONAL: Create tag pages for your most important tags where you

   describe how you are using this tag, what are the most important

   blog entries related to the tag and so forth.

9. Publish your pages on a web space of your choice

   - publishing can be done in various ways. This is how I do it using

     ~lazyblorg/make_and_publish_public_voit.sh~ which is an

     adopted version of ~lazyblorg/example_invocation.sh~:

     1. invoking ~start_all_tests.sh~

        - this is for checking whether or not recent code changes did

          something harmful to my (unfortunately very limited) set of

          unit tests

     2. invoking ~lazyblorg~ with my more or less fixed set of

        command line parameters

     3. invoking ~rsync -av testdata/2del/blog/* $HOME/public_html/~

        - it synchronizes the newly generated blog data to the local

          copy of my web space data

        - this separation makes sense to me because with this, I am

          able to do test drives without overwriting my (local copy of

          my) blog

     4. invoking [[http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/][unison]]

        - in order to transfer my local copy of my web space data to

          my public web space

   - This method has the advantage that generating (invoking

     ~lazyblorg~) and publishing (invoking ~unison~) are separate

     steps. This way, I can locally re-generate the blog (for testing

     purposes) as often I want to. However, as long as I do not sync

     it to my web space, I keep the meta-data (which is in the local

     web space copy) of the published version (and not the meta-data

     of the previous test-run).

10. Have fun with a pretty neat method to generate your blog pages

Because we are already close friends now, I tell you a *hidden

feature* of lazyblorg nobody knows yet: whenever you see a π-symbol in

the upper right corner of a blog entry on [[http://qr.cx/7wKz][my blog]]: this is a link to

the original Org-mode source of that page. This way, you can compare

Org-mode-source and HTML-result right away. Isn't that cool? :-)

** Five categories of page type

There are five different types of pages in lazyblorg. Most of the

time, you are going to produce temporal pages. However, it is

important to understand the other ones as well.

In order to process a blog-heading to its HTML5 representation, its

Org-mode file has to be included in the ~--orgfiles~ command line

argument of ~lazyblorg.py~. Do not forget to include the archive files

as well.

1. *temporal*

2. *persistent*

3. *tags*

4. *entry page*

5. *templates*

Please do read https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/wiki/Page-Types for

important details.

** BONUS: Preview Blog Article

:PROPERTIES:

:CREATED:  [2014-02-25 Tue 17:27]

:END:

It is tedious to re-generate the whole blog and even upload it to your

web-space just to check the HTML version of the article you are

currently writing.

Yeah, this also sucks at my side.

Good news everybody: There is a simple method to preview the article

under the cursor. The script [[https://github.com/novoid/lazyblorg/blob/master/preview_blogentry.sh][preview_blogentry.sh]] contains an ELISP

function that extracts the current blog article (all lazyblorg criteria

has to be fulfilled: ID, ~blog~ tag, status ~DONE~), stores it into a

temporary file, and invokes lazyblorg via ~preview_blogentry.sh~ with

this temporary file and the Org-mode file containing the format

definitions.

If this worked out, your browser shows you all generated blog

articles.

Please *do adopt the mentioned scripts* to you specific requirements -

the ones from the repository are for my personal set-up which is

unlikely to fit yours (directory paths mostly).

Bang! Another damn cool feature of lazyblorg. This is going better and

better. :-)

** BONUS: Jump From URL to Blog Article

Imagine, you're looking at a blog article of your nice

lazyblorg-generated blog. Now you want to go to the corresponding

Org-mode source to fix a typo.

The issue here is, that you have to either know, where your heading is

located or you have to go to the HTML page source, extract the ID, and

jump to this ID.

I've got a better method: put the URL of your blog article into your

clipboard (via ~C-l C-c~), press a magic shortcut in Emacs, and BAAAM!

you're right on spot.

How's that magic happening?

Just use the following Emacs lisp code snippet, adapt the ~domain~

string, and assign a keyboard shortcut:

#+begin_src elisp

  (defun my-jump-to-lazyblorg-heading-according-to-URL-in-clipboard ()

    "Retrieves an URL from the clipboard, gets its Org-mode source,

     extracts the ID of the article and jumps to its Org-mode heading"

    (interactive)

    (let (

          ;; Getting URL from the clipboard. Since it may contain

          ;; some text properties we are using substring-no-properties

          ;; function

          (url (substring-no-properties (current-kill 0)))

          ;; This is a check string: if the URL in the clipboard

          ;; doesn't start with this, an error message is shown

          (domain "http://karl-voit.at")

    )

      ;; Check if URL string is from my domain (all other strings do

      ;; not make any sense here)

      (if (string-prefix-p (upcase domain) (upcase url))

      ;; Retrieving content by URL into new buffer asynchronously

      (url-retrieve url

                        ;; call this lambda function when URL content is retrieved

            (lambda (status)

               ;; Extrating and preparing the ID

               (let* (

                                  ;; Limit the ID search to the top 1000 characters of the buffer

                  (pageheader (buffer-substring 1 1000))

                  ;; Start index of the id

                                  (start (string-match "" pageheader start))

                                  ;; Amount of characters to skip for the openning tag

                                  (chars-to-skip (length "