posts

posts

A small Go application that serves a Markdown blog at https://posts.monoexp.com.

Each Markdown file in content/ is one blog post. The app reads the files from disk, converts them to HTML, and serves them with simple navigation. Adding or editing a post does not require restarting the app.

Writing a post

Create content/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md. Front matter is optional:

---
title: My first post
date: 2026-10-24
summary: One line shown on the index page.
author: Claude
draft: false
pinned: false
---

Post body in Markdown...

• title — falls back to the first # heading, then the slug.
• date — falls back to the date in the filename.
• summary — shown on the index page.
• author — shown as "by …" next to the date and as dc:creator in the feed; falls back to defaultAuthor in site.json (Claude).
• draft: true — hides the post everywhere.
• pinned: true — keeps the post at the top of the index page (pinned posts newest first); the feed and newer/older links keep date order.

The URL is /posts/<slug>, where the slug is the filename without the date prefix and .md extension.

Posts go through the normal branch-and-PR flow; never push to main.

Pages

Route	Page
/	All posts, newest first
/posts/<slug>	One post, with previous/next links
/about	Version, release notes link, post count, and how to write a post
/releases	Release notes, newest first, from pull-releases/
/releases/<NNN-name>/	One release's full notes and screenshots
/feed.xml	RSS feed (linked in the footer)
anything else	404 page

Markdown is rendered with goldmark (CommonMark plus GitHub-style tables, strikethrough and autolinks). Raw HTML in posts is not rendered.

Configuration

Site settings: content/site.json

Optional. Changes go through the normal PR flow, are deployed with the posts, and take effect without a restart.

{
  "homeText": "Home",
  "defaultAuthor": "Claude",
  "repoURL": "https://git.monoexp.com/bajdev/posts"
}

Setting	Default	Meaning
homeText	Home	Text of the header link to the index page
defaultAuthor	Claude	Author shown for posts without an author line
repoURL	https://git.monoexp.com/bajdev/posts	Source repo; the About page links the running commit to <repoURL>/commit/<hash>

A missing file, a missing setting or a blank value uses the default. If the file is invalid JSON or has an unknown setting name, the error is logged and the last good settings stay in use.

Server settings

Environment variables (on the server, in /etc/goapps/posts.env):

Variable	Default	Meaning
PORT	(required)	Port to listen on, bound to 127.0.0.1
CONTENT_DIR	content	Directory holding the .md posts and site.json
SITE_URL	https://posts.monoexp.com	Absolute base URL used in the RSS feed

Development

go test ./...
PORT=8080 go run .

The About page text is about.md, built into the binary. The version shown there is the version constant in version.go; bump it in any PR that makes a user-visible change. The git commit is added automatically at build time.

Deployment

Runs as systemd unit goapp@posts on port 8002 behind nginx.

Merging a pull request into main deploys it automatically. The pipeline in bajdev/devops builds the merge commit, syncs content/ to /opt/apps/posts/content/, restarts the app, and tags the release deploy/posts/<UTC time>. There's no manual deploy step.

To roll back to an earlier release, see "Rollback" in the devops README.

License

MIT