clog is a small, fast and well featured web log (blog) engine for those who like the command line and are not afraid of the C language. It runs as a CGI binary.

Main features:

• Dynamic or static page rendering
• Use templates to design pages
• Create, edit and manage articles using your favourite tools (usually a text-based editor, e.g. vi)
• Comments stored in a mbox-like file (can be managed using a mail client, e.g. mutt or even mail)
• Simple anti-spam to protect comment posting
• Tags support and tag cloud
• RSS feeds (the main feed and a feed per tag)
• GZip compression

Written in C and released under the ISC license.

If your are using this blog engine on Linux (or if it doesn't build on others unix-likes system), you must edit the Makefile and uncomment the COMPAT_SRCS line.

Edit the file config.h to configure the blog engine before compiling it. Edit the file locale.h if you want to translate the messages.

Then to build it, just type:

	$ make

Now you can copy (or link) the binary into your cgi-bin directory of the http server.

By default, the articles are stored in the directory ARTICLES_DIR (defined in config.h). In this directory every articles are put in their respective directory - named using the following format YYYYMMDDHHmm (this is the date of the article, you can append an arbitrary string if you want) - in a file named article. The first line of the file is the title of the article and the rest is the content formatted in HTML. So articles should look like that:

	ARTICLES_DIR/YYYYMMDDHHmm/article

For example:

	ARTICLES_DIR/200811121418/article
	ARTICLES_DIR/200811151212-my_nice_article/article

It is possible to write the continuation of the article (which will not be displayed in the index and in the RSS feed) in the file more in the associated article directory.

The comments are stored in the file comments in the associated article directory. This file must exists and have the proper permissions (the file must be writable by the http server user) to be able to post comments. To manage the comments you can use a mail client like this basic one:

	$ mail -f path/to/comments

So a typical file layout for an article can be like this:

	ARTICLES_DIR/YYYYMMDDHHmm/article
	ARTICLES_DIR/YYYYMMDDHHmm/comments
	ARTICLES_DIR/YYYYMMDDHHmm/more

By default, the tags are stored in the directory TAGS_DIR (defined in config.h). In this directory a tag is a directory - named after the name of the tag - that contains files named after the directory name of the articles (e.g. empty files or symbolic links). So tags should look like that:

	TAGS_DIR/<tag name>/<article>

For example:

	TAGS_DIR/life/200811121418
	TAGS_DIR/life/200811151212-my_nice_article
	TAGS_DIR/geek/200811151212-my_nice_article

In the directory TEMPLATES_DIR (defined in config.h), there is some HTML files which are only parts of a page. The blog engine will put together these templates and insert the data to design the pages. In order to know what to put where, the blog engine parses the templates to find markers, which look like that %%MARKER_NAME%%.

There is some markers that can be inserted in every templates:

	%%BASE_URL%%	The URL of the blog
	%%BIN_URL%%	The URL of the blog binary
	%%SITE_NAME%%	The name of the blog
	%%DESCRIPTION%%	The description of the blog
	%%COPYRIGHT%%	The copyright notice
	%%CHARSET%%	The charset of the page
	%%HEADERS%%	Some additional HTML headers

The file TEMPLATES_DIR/page.html contains the general design of the page. It can contains the following markers:

	%%PAGE_BODY%%	Contains the body of the page (indexes, articles, ...)
	%%PAGE_TITLE%%	The name of the page (prepended with " - ")
	%%NAVIGATION_NEXT%%	A link to the next page
	%%NAVIGATION_PREVIOUS%%	A link to the previous page
	%%NAVIGATION_PAGE%%	The current page number
	%%NAVIGATION_PAGES%%	The number of pages

The file TEMPLATES_DIR/article.html contains an article. It can contains the following markers:

	%%ARTICLE_URL%%		The URL that points to the article
	%%ARTICLE_TITLE%%	The title of the article
	%%ARTICLE_DATE%%	The date of the article
	%%ARTICLE_TAGS%%	The links to the tags of the article
	%%ARTICLE_BODY%%	The actual content of the article
	%%ARTICLE_COMMENTS_INFO%%
	%%ARTICLE_COMMENTS%%

The file TEMPLATES_DIR/article_comment.html contains a comment. It can contains the following markers:

	%%COMMENT_AUTHOR%%	The name of the author of the comment
	%%COMMENT_NB%%		The number of the comment
	%%COMMENT_MAIL%%	The mail address of the author
	%%COMMENT_WEB%%		The web page of the author
	%%COMMENT_DATE%%	The date of the comment
	%%COMMENT_TEXT%%	The actual content of the comment

The file TEMPLATES_DIR/comment_form.html contains the form to post a comment. It can contains the following markers:

	%%FORM_POST_URL%%	The URL of the blog binary to post the comment
	%%ANTISPAM_JAM1%%	The first operand of the anti-spam
	%%ANTISPAM_JAM2%%	The second operand of the anti-spam
	%%ANTISPAM_HASH%%	An hidden field used by the anti-spam
	%%FORM_ERROR%%		An error message
	%%FORM_NAME%%
	%%FORM_MAIL%%
	%%FORM_WEB%%
	%%FORM_TEXT%%

You need to type some commands (described below) to generate the static pages of your blog. The blog engine will automatically update them when a comment is posted. To use the static mode by default, just define DEFAULT_STATIC in the config.h file.

/!\ Permissions consideration: The HTML and XML files in the directory BASE_DIR (in config.h) must be writable by the http server user, to update them when a comment is posted.

/!\ Chroot considerations: If you run your http server in a chroot, the root directory won't be the same if the blog engine is started by the http server or from the command line, so the templates and data files won't be at the same place. To fix this just modify CHROOT_DIR (in config.h).

To generate all the static pages (you usually need this command when you have added or deleted an article, if you have created a new tag or added a new tag to an existing article):

	./blog -s all

To generate a specific article (if you have updated it):

	./blog -s <name of the directory of the article>

For example:

	./blog -s 200811121418a

You can also generate a specific page, like all the articles:

	./blog -s articles

the tag cloud:

	./blog -s tags

and the RSS feeds:

	./blog -s rss