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A Simple to Use Markdown Blog

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Getting Started

1. Install Writr

npm install -g writr

2. Setup your directory (look at /blog_example for how to do this)

writr init

blog/*.md           //markdown files in the folder root
blog/images         //images for the blog
blog/config.json    //config file (optional)
blog/templates      //template directory for your index, post, and tag

3. Create your first post

writr new

This will allow you to answer a couple questions to setup your first blog post.

4. Run Writr on it with defaults. This will output everything to ./blog_output

writr

5. You can serve your blog with a simple webserver

writr serve

4. Integrate your blog with Express

Then in express map your blog_output via static files:

app.use("/blog/*/images", express.static(path.join(__dirname, "blog_output/images")))
app.use("/blog/images", express.static(path.join(__dirname, "blog_output/images")))
app.use("/blog", express.static(path.join(__dirname, "blog_output")))

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CLI

• -h, --help: Output usage information
• -p, --path: Path of where the blog, and config are located
• -o, --output: Path of where to output the generated blog
• -r, --render: What do you want rendered such as html or json (example --render html,json)
• -c, --config: Configuration file location if different than 'path'
• init: Initialize a new blog
• new: Create a new blog post
• serve: Serve the blog. You can also specify a port with --port and --watch for hot reloading

Templates

There are three templates that are part of every instance of Writr. By default it goes in the /blog/templates directory. Here are the files and are in Handlebars format:

• index.hjs: This is the main template that lists all of the latest blogs or what you want to add.
• post.hjs: The post itself and usually supporting items around that such as what is next to look at and tags.
• tag.hjs: Showing articles by tag filtering.

Template Partials

You can use template partials such as a header or footer by creating a folder in templates called partials. In there create a standard handlebars template file such as header.hjs. To reference it go to any of the main template files and include it like {{> header}}:

<h1>Post</h1>

{{> header}}

<p>{{post.title}}</p>
<p>{{post.author}}</p>
<p>{{{post.body}}}</p>

<p>{{post.matter.featured_image}}</p>

<p>{{previousPost.id}}</p>
<p>{{nextPost.id}}</p>
...

Different Templates / Layouts

You can also set a post to use a different layout by setting the layout value in the front-matter like so:

---
title:  'Docula: Persistent Links and Styles!'
tags:
- Github
- Open Source
- Docula
date: 2017-03-07
layout: post2
featured_image: Docula_%20Persistent%20Links%20and%20Styles%201.jpeg
---

Permalinks

In your posts front-matter you can specify the format of the url to be generated. By default is the :title (also known as the none style) that is formatted correctly.

Variables

Variable	Description
year	Year from the post’s filename with four digits.
short_year	Year from the post’s filename without the century. (00..99)
month	Month from the post’s filename. (01..12)
i_month	Month without leading zeros
short_month	Three-letter month abbreviation, e.g. "Dec".
long_month	Full month name, e.g. “January”.
day	Day of the month from the post’s filename. (01..31)
i_day	Day of the month without leading zeros from the post’s filename.
y_day	Day of the year (01...365)
short_day	Three-letter weekday abbreviation, e.g. “Sun”.
long_day	Weekday name, e.g. “Sunday”.
week	Week number of the current year, starting with the first week having a majority of its days in January. (01..53)
hour	Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, zero-padded from the post’s date front matter. (00..23)
minute	Minute of the hour from the post’s date front matter. (00..59)
second	Second of the minute from the post’s date front matter. (00..59)
title	Title from the document’s front matter.

Default Styles

You can simply put in the style on permalink setting in the individual post front-matter or globally in config.json

Style	Template
default	/:title/
date	/:year/:month/:day/:title/
ordinal	/:year/:y_day/:title/

Set Layout it in the Post

---
title: 'Docula: Persistent Links and Styles!'
tags:
- Github
- Open Source
- Docula
permalink: date
date: 2017-03-07
layout: post2
featured_image: Docula_%20Persistent%20Links%20and%20Styles%201.jpeg
---

The url will be: /2017/03/07/docula-persistent-links-and-styles

Set Layout Globally

To set it globally you can set it in the config.json by setting the permaLink variable like so:

{
    "output" : "./blog_output",
    "render": [ "html" , "json", "atom", "images"],
    "path": "./blog_example",
    "title": "Example Blog",
    "url": "https://writr.io/blog",
    "authorName": "Jared Wray",
    "authorEmail": "[email protected]",
    "permalink": ":year/:month/:title"
}

Markdown

To learn more about Markdown go here: https://markdownguide.org