boreys / compose

A simple blogging platform built with Go and MongoDB.

Compose

Compose is a really simple blogging platform that I built over the course of a couple weekends to write and serve content on my website.

For more screenshots, click here.

I decided to use the Go Programming Language over other more popular languages largely because it's a language that I had been wanting to learn. As someone who loves C and Python, I think Go is pretty awesome. I highly recommend spending some time with it or trying it out for your next project. MongoDB is used to store all the data.

I had fun building and using Compose, and I think others might too. It is still in pre-alpha stages and as such it is subject to some changes, but it is usable. If you're interested in contributing, feel free to send me feedback or, better yet, a pull request.

Current Features

• Simple
• REST API
• Admin Interface
• File Uploads
• Markdown
• Custom Themes

Installing

Install Required Dependencies

Install Go

On Ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get install golang

On Mac OS X

$ brew install go

Install MongoDB

On Ubuntu

$ sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 7F0CEB10
$ echo "deb http://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu "$(lsb_release -sc)"/mongodb-org/3.0 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-3.0.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y mongodb-org

On Mac OS X

$ brew install mongodb

Setup Go Workspace

For those unfamiliar with Go, a workspace is needed when developing or installing Go packages. To create a workspace, simply assign the GOPATH environment variable.

$ mkdir $HOME/go
$ export GOPATH=$HOME/go
$ export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin

Install Compose

$ go install github.com/mborgerson/Compose/compose

Building the Themes

For running Compose as-is, you do not need to build the themes. If you are developing Compose however, you will probably want to modify the themes/templates.

Install Required Dependencies

To build the themes, Node.js and NPM are required.

On Ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy npm

On Mac OS X

$ brew install node npm

Install Gulp and Bower globally.

$ sudo npm install -g bower gulp

Now, move to the theme_admin directory.

$ cd theme_admin

Install Node.js packages and client-side dependencies.

$ npm install
$ bower install

Build

Finally, run gulp to build the theme.

$ gulp

Build other themes

Do the same for theme_site.

Running

Assuming you're serving from an Ubuntu box...

First, make sure mongod is running.

$ service mongod status

For testing purposes, you can start the MongoDB daemon manually with a specific database path with the following command.

$ mongod --dbpath=./db

Next, as described above, make sure that the GOPATH environment variable is set. For convenience, add the workspace bin directory to the PATH environment variable.

$ export GOPATH=$HOME/go
$ export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH

Finally, run Compose.

$ compose

This will create a config file if one does not already exist. Now, run again.

$ compose

This will start an HTTP server listening at http://127.0.0.1:8000.

Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/setup to initialize the database.

Now, you can login and write content at http://127.0.0.1:8000/login.

Deployment

You are free to run Compose independently. For security and efficiency however, I recommend setting up an NGINX reverse proxy with HTTPS and caching enabled.

Useful Tips

Save/Restore a MongoDB Database

You can save and restore MongoDB database with relative ease. This is especially for backing up your database, or deploying it from your development system.

mongodump -d compose -o compose_dump/
mongorestore -d compose compose_dump/compose

Run on Startup

If you're using a version of Ubuntu with Upstart (e.g. 14.04), you can copy the following script to /etc/init/compose.conf. This will automatically start Compose after the MongoDB daemon has been started. Assuming your Go workspace is at /srv/blog/go_workspace, your config file and themes are at /srv/blog, and the user you want to use is www-data.

description "Compose Server"
author      "Matt Borgerson"

start on started mongod
stop on shutdown

script

    export GOPATH="/srv/blog/go_workspace"
    echo $$ > /var/run/compose.pid
    chdir /srv/blog/
    exec su -s /bin/sh -c 'exec "$0" "$@"' www-data -- /srv/blog/go_workspace/bin/compose

end script

pre-start script
    echo "[`date`] Compose Starting" >> /var/log/compose.log
end script

pre-stop script
    rm /var/run/compose.pid
    echo "[`date`] Compose Stopping" >> /var/log/compose.log
end script

License

Compose is licensed under the terms of the GPLv3 license. See LICENSE.txt for the full license text.

Todo List

Just some features I had in mind:

☑ Index
☑ View Posts
☑ Create/Edit/Delete Posts
☑ Markdown Support
☑ Basic User Authentication
☑ File Uploads
☑ Basic Post and File Caching Headers
☑ Drafts
☑ Custom/Changeable Post Slugs
☐ User Images and Biography Pages
☐ Non-blog Pages (About, Contact, etc)
☐ Post Previews
☐ API Error Handling
☐ API Documentation
☐ Better Error Handling/Reporting
☐ Multi User Management and Privileges
☐ Limit Number of Failed Logins per IP address
☐ Live Theme Switching
☐ Logging
☐ Statistics
☐ Dashboard
☐ Post Revision Tracking