a command-line based blogging platform running on tilde.town
ttbp stands for "tilde.town blogging platform", the original working name for
this project.
ttbp runs from the command line, providing a hub for writing personal blog
posts and reading posts written by other users of tilde.town. it's a little bit
like livejournal or dreamwidth or tumblr. you can opt to publish your posts to a
public html file hosted on your tilde page, to tilde.town's gopher server, or
keep all your entries private to the tilde.town server.
to use, run feels while logged in to tilde.town
this is a project that runs on tilde.town, so all users of this program are expected to operate under the tilde.town code of conduct. content/personal issues should be worked out according to the CoC, with support from the administrative team if needed.
no coding or html experience is necessary to get started. just log in to your tilde.town account and enter:
feels
ttbp will ask you a few questions to get you started. after that, writing and reading entries all happen within the program.
that's it!
if you're having trouble getting started, or run into program errors or strange behavior, please send internal tilde.town mail to ~endorphant and i'll try to sort things out!
there's also a function from the main menu that lets you send feedback/inquiries to me directly; this uses internal tilde.town mail, which is what i'll respond to.
entries are recorded as plaintext files in your ~/.ttbp/entries directory.
ttbp will use your selected editor to open and write files; each day is its
own entry, like a diary page. at midnight for whatever timezone you've set for
your user account on tilde.town, you'll get a fresh entry. if you don't write
any feels on a particular day, no entries will show up there.
when you save and quit the text editor, your entry will automatically propagate
to the global feels list; if you've opted to publish your feels to html/gopher,
those files will update immediately. you can always go back to the current day's
entry and edit/add as you'd like, but older entries will not be available for
editing from ttbp.
(since files are just stored as plaintext in your directory, it's possible to edit and move old entries directly from the command line. however, changing old entries might cause strange things to happen with timestamps. the main program looks at the filename first for setting the date, then the last modified time to sort recent posts. it expects YYYMMDD.txt as the filename; anything else won't show up as a valid entry. yes, this means you can post things out of date order by creating files with any date you want.)
<!-- comments --> to have them show up
in the feed but not render in a browser (but people can still read
them with view-source)the browse global feels feature shows the ten most recent entries that anyone
has written on ttbp. this list is only accessible from within tilde.town,
although individual entries may be posted to html or gopher.
you can also pull up a list of a single user's feels through check out your
neighbors, which displays all users who are writing on ttbp based on their
most recently updated entry, and a link to their public html blog if they've
opted to publish their posts.
please note! entries written on ttbp should be considered sensitive,
private information, even if a particular user is publishing entries in a
world-viewable way! please be respectful about having access to other people's
feels, and do not copy/repeat any information without getting their explicit
permission. tilde.town operates on a high level of mutual trust, and ttbp is
designed to give individuals control over their content.
when you start your ttbp, you have the option of publishing or not publishing your blog.
if you opt to not publish, your entires will never be accessible from outside of
the tilde.town network; other tilde.town users will still be able to read your
entries through the ttbp interface, or by directly accessing your
~/.ttbp/entries directory.
if you want to further protect your entries, you can chmod 700 your entries
directory.
if you opt to publish, the program creates a directory ~/.ttbp/www where it
stores all html files it generates, and symlinks this from your ~/public_html
with your chosen blog directory. your blog will also be listed on the main ttbp
page.
you can also opt to publish to gopher, and the program will automatically generate a gophermap of your feels.
you can set publishing status on individual entries, or bury individual feels; see "data management" below for details.
the manage your feels menu provides several tools for organizing your feels.
these are all actions you can perform manually from the command line, but doing
them from within the program can help keep your files properly linked up.
(nopub) will not get written to html or gopher,
and toggling them from this menu will immediately publish or unpublish
that entry (if you're not publishing your posts at all, these settings
won't matter, since your feels will never show up outside of tilde.town)~/.ttbp/backups/ with the current date, and a second copy to
your home directory for safekeeping.~/.ttbp/backups directory for archives, and
expects a file created by the above backup utility. if it detects any file
collisions, it will preserve your current live copy and leave the backup
verison in a temp directory, and notify you that this happened. also, any
entries that were previously marked as (nopub) will retain their nopub
status.~/.ttbp/buried (and marked with a unique timestamp to prevent
file collision) with permissions set to 600, meaning no one except you
will be able to open that file. these entries are also hidden from your
own view from read over feels, and you'll have to open the files from
the command line if you want to see them. this is intended to be a
permament action, so you'll be asked to type the entry date once to load
the feel, then shown a preview of that feel, and then type the date again
to confirm burying.~/.ttbp directory. any backups that you have in ~/.ttbp/backups
will also be deleted with this action (which is why the backup function
makes a second copy for safekeeping in your home directory). you will no
longer show up in any lists as a user.the settings menu lets you change specific options for handling your feels and using the interface.
public_html where feels will be
published (if you're not publishing your feels, this defaults to None)you can modify how your blog looks by editing the stylesheet or header and footer files. the program sets you up with basic default. if you break your page somehow, you can force the program to regenerate your configuration by deleting your ~/.ttbp directory entirely. you might want to back up your ~/.ttbp/entries directory before you do this.
these are a few ideas being kicked around, or under active development:
less)other ideas are listed on github as upcoming features or feature requests!
(this section is only relevant if you plan on forking the repo and running an instance of this yourself)
please check out my contributor guidelines on github if you'd like to get involved with development!
if you find any bugs or strange behavior, please message me locally on tildemail or open a github issue and i'll get back to you as soon as i can.
if you're interested in helping with the code, please drop me some tildemail!
i accept tips for development work on liberapay
thanks to: