README.textile

h1. Honk

A minimalistic, text-based blogging engine.

h2. Features

• Posts,
• Comments,
• Tags,
• That'it.

h2. Requirements, install & setup

You'll need "Sinatra":http://github.com/sinatra/sinatra and, optionnaly, "Thor":http://github.com/wycats/thor.

Thor is used for convenience scripts (regenerating the taglist, managing your posts) so I strongly recommend that you install it. The formatter may be used to ease the editing of your posts. Honk will treat the contents as raw HTML if you don't specify a formatter (see below).

Once you've got this, clone this repository or grab a tarball and extract it where you want to install your blog. Run @ruby honk.rb@ to start your blog.

You can run @thor script:bootstrap@ to build the default files and start editing them right away!

h2. Usage

Honk relies on two main files, plus your posts and the comments for your posts, which will be automatically generated.

h3. Index

The @index.yml@ files contains a sequence of mappings in which each key is a short name for your post, and the value is the path for your post (relative to Honk's root) or @~@ to automatically build the path.

--- !honk.yapok.org,2009/Index
- my_first_post: my_first_post.yml
- another_one: another_one.yml
- alias: this_post_is_aliased.yml
- magic: ~ # will map to magic.yml
- more_magic: foo_~.yml # will map to foo_more_magic.yml

The way Honk works allows you to write posts without publishing them. They will be available only when you add them to the index. Be careful that it is a sequence, which mean it's ordered: the most recent post goes at the bottom of this file.

h3. Tags

Next, the @tags.yml@ file is simply a mapping that associates each tag with a list of posts.

Here's an example @tags.yml@

--- !honk.yapok.org,2009/Tags
a_tag:
  - a_post
another_one:
  - a_post

h3. Posts

Posts are stored in YAML files as well, the format is self-explanatory enough:

--- !honk.yapok.org,2009/Post
:title: A post about something
:tags:
  - miscellaneous
  - another tag
:timestamp: 2009-01-27T21:42:21+01:00
:commentable: yes
:contents: |-
  
This is my first post
  
As you can see I write raw HTML

Remember that in order to publish a post, you have to add it to the @index.yml@ file!

h3. Comments

Comments are stored in one file per post, so if you have a post stored in @my_post.yml@, the comments file would be @my_post.comments.yml@. The format is rather simple too:

--- !honk.yapok.org,2009/Comment
:author: Jonh Doe
:email: john@doe.com
:website: http://johndoe.com/
:timestamp: 2009-01-27T21:42:21+01:00
:contents: |-
  Wow dude, that post is awesome!

The comments file is a stream of comments, from the oldest to the latest.

h2. Configuring and tweaking

The basic configuration is done through the Honk.setup block it lets you define some basic parameters for your blog such as pagination. Just open the @config.rb@ and follow the instructions.

h3. Configuration options

• @paginate@: defines how many posts are showed per page.
• @root@: tells honk where to find the posts, index and tags files, default is the same dir as you blog, but you can change this to put your content elsewhere.
• @comment_filter@: a proc that returns the filtered text for a comment. This is useful for escaping HTML, allowing formatting, etc.
• @meta@: defines metadata for your blog such as author's name, email, a title...

If you want more tweaking, you can still hack the source, it's open.

h3. Theme & layout

Of course, Honk's layout can be overriden. Just take a look at @public/master.css@ and @views/@.