jaguar-blog
the simplest possible static blog
static blogs are the rage these days,
and the operative word is often “simple”...
...so here is a static blogging system that is as simple as possible...
there are a mere handful of files involved, which are furnished to you, and that’s all there ever has to be, if that’s the way you’d like it to be.
that’s because the entire content, of all of your blog posts, is stored in one light-markup file.
i use z.m.l. — a light-markup format i developed myself, for books, based on project gutenberg e-texts — but use whatever you like: markdown, restructured-text, asciidoc, whatever. heck, this file can even be in .html itself, if you’re a masochist like that.
here are the files involved:
- one .html template file with your “chrome” around each post
- one javascript file that administers presentation and interface
- one .css file with the required stuff, plus your customizations
- one graphic file (logo, whatever) because all-text is too boring
- one file holding the text of all your posts (a sample is included)
when someone summons the template .html file to their browser, it then ajax-downloads the content-file. the content file then gets split into the separate posts, and (when needed) each post gets converted to .html so that it can be displayed in the browser.
for a demo of this, run the .html file right in this directory itself:
and to view the individual files, click these links:
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http://zenmagiclove.com/misc/jb25/jb25.js
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http://zenmagiclove.com/misc/jb25/jb25.css
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http://zenmagiclove.com/misc/jb25/jb25-jaguar.jpg
- http://zenmagiclove.com/misc/jb25/jb25-mch.zml
to get all of the files in one .zip download:
but, of course, you also get all of the files when you summon the .html file in your browser. and that’s perhaps the most amazing thing about this — that, by simply using this method, you are handing the entire system over to other people, who can turn around and use it themselves, and thus hand it to still more people, who can...
the virality of this approach could be phenomenal.
this demo is only a demo. none of this work is production-hardened yet.
indeed, some of it is freshly-written, using an incorrect perspective, precisely so it will be so fragile that it cannot be used in production.
this means that you cannot just swap in your own content and expect it to work correctly. not yet.
but i promise this project will iterate very rapidly. and it will soon be good enough for just about anyone to use.
in the meantime, this code does serve quite nicely for proof-of-concept. so if you use this little fishing lesson to build your own fishing business, more power to you.
i realize there are might be some concerns about this approach, on things like s.e.o, trips to the server, etc. i would love to hear any reservations that anyone might have, so that i will be aware of them. at the same time, i know there is a lot of good that can come out of this approach, so i intend to pursue it. if only for the fun of it, it’s worth it alone.
if you have any questions, comments, feedback, reactions, or anything, please e-mail me at bowerbird at aol dot com.
oh yeah, one more thing, a bonus because you read all the way to the end. if you click on the jaguar in the upper-right corner of the demo, you will get a rough search capability. being able to search the entire body of posts is one of the benefits of downloading all of them in one chunk.
