FlatPress blogging platform: flat text file stored, open source, freeware

[Curt]

Hardscratch is the name of the small rural community in which I live. 

-kyrathaba (August 08, 2011, 06:01 PM)

-fantastic; close to both Panama and Persia !!!   

[kyrathaba]

I envision my blog becoming a sort of centralized information-store for me, although I've not quite figured out how I'm going to handle sensitive information, such as addresses, phone numbers, etc.  There are three approaches I've thought about: (1) use a PHP password-protection scheme to protect certain pages, (2) encrypt the data (but that sort of defeats ease of access), and (3) obfuscate the data in some simple way that I can mentally decode it on the fly -- I dunno, transpose digits in phone numbers or shift them all by 1, for instance.  I'm posting this here for feedback, because the community always proves fruitful when you're wanting to do something without reinventing the wheel.

I suppose the obvious answer is: memorize the most critical data, or keep it on my person in a passworded PIM device.  I'm open to people shooting down this idea of putting semi-sensitive stuff on my blog in a semi-protected format.  Obviously, I'm not going to put any seriously sensitive stuff up, like financial info (credit card # anyone?)

[wraith808]

That's why I use PMWiki for my site.  You can password protect parts and leave other parts open, and it's easier to add to, and isn't date driven.  I'd suggest if you're going to use it as an information store, you should look at some sort of wiki.  I've just found that I like PMWiki the best, because of it's extensibility, the ease of the wiki language and adding pages, and the fact that it uses flat files like FlatPress.

[kyrathaba]

Thanks wraith!  That does look like what I'm needing.  I'm only wanting a select few pages to be passworded.  Can I set up PMWiki in a subdirectory and just password-protect access to web-pages in that directory only?

I'll read more about PMWiki tonight.  Right now, I've got to leave for work.

Thanks for the info!

[40hz]

I suppose the obvious answer is: memorize the most critical data, or keep it on my person in a passworded PIM device.  I'm open to people shooting down this idea of putting semi-sensitive stuff on my blog in a semi-protected format.  Obviously, I'm not going to put any seriously sensitive stuff up, like financial info (credit card # anyone?)

-kyrathaba (August 09, 2011, 07:21 AM)

Why not just use KeyPass to keep track of all of that and sync the encrypted datafile to something like iDrive or DropBox? There's been a bunch of how-tos on this. Here's two to get you started:

http://www.vilepickl...while-staying-secure

http://www.howtogeek...swords-with-keepass/

I use KeyPass and a cloud drive in conjunction with KyPass on my iPhone. Makes sense since I always have that "skinny little white POS" with me at all times.


This combo is my de facto password vault. So now, no matter where I go, I can get to my passwords and secure data.
 

[wraith808]

Thanks wraith!  That does look like what I'm needing.  I'm only wanting a select few pages to be passworded.  Can I set up PMWiki in a subdirectory and just password-protect access to web-pages in that directory only?

I'll read more about PMWiki tonight.  Right now, I've got to leave for work.

Thanks for the info!

-kyrathaba (August 09, 2011, 07:51 AM)

You'll want to look at the topic on Passwords.  What I'd do is set up a WikiGroup, then password protect that.

[JavaJones]

I agree, some kind of wiki or online project/notes management system is probably best. I use Redmine for this sort of thing and I like it a lot but it's probably overkill for most (even me, heh).

- Oshyan

[40hz]

                                       

@JavaJones - Redmine? For personal use??? Good lord! (Muy macho. I like!)  

Has it gotten any easier to install?  

[kyrathaba]

I became a bit frustrated that using the Search box on my Flatpress blog only turned up results in which the search term was found within post titles, not within the actual contents of the posts.  Found that by modifying the SearchBox plug-in, I could repeat the search and, although it at first shows "No Results", it also gives you a "Search again" link.  Clicking it, it produces an advanced search interface that allows, via radio-button, to select for search within posts.  I've attached the modified plug-in, which should be placed in flatpress/fp_plugins/searchbox/

[JavaJones]

Redmine is not terribly hard to install, provided you already have Ruby/Rails setup on your box. But it's not as nice and easy as your typical PHP script. I dearly love Redmine, but I do wish they'd focus on ease of maintenance/upgrade, and add a few additional niceties. One frustrating thing I came across recently for example is that the version of RoR that Cpanel installs is not compatible with Redmine currently.

It's like they came up with a 90% awesome system and now, despite development continuing at a good pace, little of interest (to me) is being added. Plugins continue to offer some interest though. There was even a time I considered basing an entire public personal website off of it! Mouser no doubt remembers that.

- Oshyan

[f0dder]

Redmine is not terribly hard to install, provided you already have Ruby/Rails setup on your box.

-JavaJones (August 10, 2011, 03:47 PM)

...but a Ruby setup is a big bowl of AAAAAAAAAARGH to setup. At least it's been no joy for me on gentoo and debian systems. Pickyness about versions, weird behavior, RoR connections to mysql timing out after N hours with no apparent fix, sluggish performance, et cetera.

If you manage to get it going, do yourself a favor - never upgrade anything. Ruby is famous for breaking backwards compatibility, even for relatively minor updates, and the various Gem authors have taken that habit to heart.

[40hz]

Redmine is not terribly hard to install, provided you already have Ruby/Rails setup on your box.

-JavaJones (August 10, 2011, 03:47 PM)

...but a Ruby setup is a big bowl of AAAAAAAAAARGH to setup. At least it's been no joy for me on gentoo and debian systems. Pickyness about versions, weird behavior, RoR connections to mysql timing out after N hours with no apparent fix, sluggish performance, et cetera.

If you manage to get it going, do yourself a favor - never upgrade anything. Ruby is famous for breaking backwards compatibility, even for relatively minor updates, and the various Gem authors have taken that habit to heart.

-f0dder (August 16, 2011, 11:06 AM)

Boy I'm glad it's not just me!  

I've run into similar to what f0dder is describing at one time or another when evaluating RoR/Redmine. Last time out we wound up using a  prebuilt stack from TurnkeyLinux to get it to work reliably.

[wraith808]

If you manage to get it going, do yourself a favor - never upgrade anything. Ruby is famous for breaking backwards compatibility, even for relatively minor updates, and the various Gem authors have taken that habit to heart.

-f0dder (August 16, 2011, 11:06 AM)

This.  1000 times this.

I've run into similar to what f0dder is describing at one time or another when evaluating RoR/Redmine. Last time out we wound up using a  prebuilt stack from TurnkeyLinux to get it to work reliably.

-40hz (August 16, 2011, 12:23 PM)

I've come to the conclusion that RoR is a ploy designed to monetize Linux. 


...Not really, but it feels that way sometime.

[JavaJones]

Sadly, I have to agree with everyone bemoaning the difficulty of setting up and *maintaining* RoR. My current solution has been to just use a RoR-oriented web host (which can also do PHP, etc. it's just that they take care of the harder part of doing RoR). So far I've had no major problems running Redmine and other RoR projects. But this is not an appropriate solution for many. RoR really needs to mature as a platform if it's going to continue to gain popularity, particularly outside the coder/web hacker scene.

- Oshyan

[kyrathaba]

Back to Flatpress for a moment: I want to let everyone know that I have Beyond Compare 3 and a system of chained batch files working great for backing up my Flatpress blog daily, or at least a couple times weekly.  I haven't yet automated the BC-work, but it can be done -- BC includes commandline parameter support and scripting support.  Once my online Flatpress files are mirrored to my backup drive, I have automated the copying of the backed-up directory to multiple attached drives and to my Dropbox directory, so that it'll be uploaded/synced.  Handy stuff.

Upshot: it's relatively easy (and fast: only a few kilobytes every couple days to be backed up, depending on how much you post) to backup a Flatpress blog.