Kidsblogz
This is a small system I created for my kids when we went on an overseas holiday in 2015. I'd looked into existing systems-- but they were all overengineered, with too many dependencies.
Example: http://ellie.applied-eclectics.org
Usage
- Individual blogs can have custom template.html and style.css
- Basic blog settings saved in blog.json
- Create a new entry by adding a markdown formatted text file to the dropbox folder, named as YYYYMMDD[a-e].md
- Images and other files can be stored in same folder or subfolder (as long as they're referenced properly in the markdown). Images use the standard markdown  format. Links to videos online can be put in with iframe or video tags
- Changes picked up as soon as dropbox is synced
- Entries can be created on computer, or on any mobile app that can save a text file into Dropbox.
- Blog will show most recent entry by default, with prev/next links and a link to a complete index
Setup
- Web server, running dropbox (I use headless, selective sync)
- Individual blog folders created under a single folder on Dropbox and shared with each blog owner
- DNS entries for each blog subdomain
- Apache vhosts entries to identify relevant code/data folder for each blog instance. Code is shared between all the blogs.
Code
Ruby using redcarpet for markdown processing.
Code Coming Soon
History
This was originally implemented using Node.js and the marked and node-static npm modules, and was proxied from apache.
In 2025 I spent a day rewriting it in Ruby, with Phusion Passenger Apache integration.
