mataroa: Naked blogging platform, for minimalists.

#mataroa

Naked blogging platform.

#Community

We have a mailing list at ~sirodoht/[email protected] for the mataroa community to introduce themselves, their blogs, and discuss anything that’s on their mind!

Archives at lists.sr.ht/~sirodoht/mataroa-community

#Tools

#Contributing

Open a PR on GitHub.

Send an email patch to ~sirodoht/[email protected]. See how to contribute using email patches here: git-send-email.io.

Read our docs at docs.mataroa.blog

#Development

This is a Django codebase. Check out the Django docs for general technical documentation.

#Structure

The Django project is mataroa. There is one Django app, main, with all business logic. Application CLI commands are generally divided into two categories, those under python manage.py and those under make.

#Set up subdomains

Because mataroa works primarily with subdomain, one cannot access the basic web app using the standard http://127.0.0.1:8000 or http://localhost:8000 URLs. What we do for local development is adding a few custom entries on our /etc/hosts system file.

Important note: there needs to be an entry of each user account created in the local development environment, so that the web server can respond to it.

The first line is the main needed: mataroalocal.blog. The rest are included as examples of other users one can create in their local environment. The easiest way to create them is to go through the sign up page (http://mataroalocal.blog:8000/accounts/create/ using default values).

# /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 mataroalocal.blog

127.0.0.1 paul.mataroalocal.blog
127.0.0.1 random.mataroalocal.blog
127.0.0.1 anyusername.mataroalocal.blog

This will enable us to access mataroa locally (once we start the web server) at http://mataroalocal.blog:8000/ and if we make a user account with username paul, then we will be able to access it at http://paul.mataroalocal.blog:8000/

#Docker

[!NOTE]
This is the last step for initial Docker setup. See the "Environment variables" section below, for further configuration details.

To set up a development environment with Docker and Docker Compose, run the following to start the web server and database:

docker compose up

If you have also configured hosts as described above in the "Set up subdomains" section, mataroa should now be locally accessible at http://mataroalocal.blog:8000/

Note: The database data are saved in the git-ignored docker-postgres-data docker volume, located in the root of the project.

#Dependencies

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.dev.txt
pip install -r requirements.txt

#Environment variables

A file named .envrc is used to define the environment variables required for this project to function. One can either export it directly or use direnv. There is an example environment file one can copy as base:

cp .envrc.example .envrc

.envrc should contain the following variables:

# .envrc

export DEBUG=1
export SECRET_KEY=some-secret-key
export DATABASE_URL=postgres://mataroa:db-password@db:5432/mataroa
export EMAIL_HOST_USER=smtp-user
export EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=smtp-password

When on production, also include/update the following variables (see Deployment and Backup):

# .envrc

export DEBUG=0
export PGPASSWORD=db-password

When on Docker, to change or populate environment variables, edit the environment key of the web service either directly on docker-compose.yml or by overriding it using the standard named git-ignored docker-compose.override.yml.

# docker-compose.override.yml

version: "3.8"

services:
  web:
    environment:
      EMAIL_HOST_USER=smtp-user
      EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=smtp-password

Finally, stop and start docker compose up again. It should pick up the override file as it has the default name docker-compose.override.yml.

#Database

This project is using one PostreSQL database for persistence.

One can use the make pginit command to initialise a database in the postgres-data/ directory.

After setting the DATABASE_URL (see above), create the database schema with:

python manage.py migrate

Initialising the database with some sample development data is possible with:

python manage.py loaddata dev-data

dev-data is defined in main/fixtures/dev-data.json
Credentials of the fixtured user are admin / admin.

#Serve

To run the Django development server:

python manage.py runserver

If you have also configured hosts as described above in the "Set up subdomains" section, mataroa should now be locally accessible at http://mataroalocal.blog:8000/

#Testing

Using the Django test runner:

python manage.py test

For coverage, run:

coverage run --source='.' --omit '.venv/*' manage.py test
coverage report -m

#Code linting & formatting

We use ruff for Python code formatting and linting.

To format:

ruff format

To lint:

ruff check
ruff check --fix

#Python dependencies

We use pip-tools to manage our Python dependencies:

pip-compile -U requirements.in
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt

#Deployment

See the Deployment document for an overview on steps required to deploy a mataroa instance.

#Useful Commands

To reload the gunicorn process:

sudo systemctl reload mataroa

To reload Caddy:

systemctl restart caddy  # root only

gunicorn logs:

journalctl -fb -u mataroa

Caddy logs:

journalctl -fb -u caddy

Get an overview with systemd status:

systemctl status caddy
systemctl status mataroa

#Backup

See Database Backup for details. In summary:

To create a database dump:

pg_dump -Fc --no-acl mataroa -h localhost -U mataroa -f /home/deploy/mataroa.dump -w

To restore a database dump:

pg_restore -v -h localhost -cO --if-exists -d mataroa -U mataroa -W mataroa.dump

#Management

In addition to the standard Django management commands, there are also:

processnotifications: sends notification emails for new blog posts of existing records.
mailexports: emails users of their blog exports.

They are triggered using the standard manage.py Django way; eg:

python manage.py processnotifications

#Billing

One can deploy mataroa without setting up billing functionalities. This is the default case. To handle payments and subscriptions this project uses Stripe. To enable Stripe and payments, one needs to have a Stripe account with a single Product (eg. "Mataroa Premium Plan").

To configure, add the following variables from your Stripe account to your .envrc:

export STRIPE_API_KEY="sk_test_XXX"
export STRIPE_PUBLIC_KEY="pk_test_XXX"
export STRIPE_PRICE_ID="price_XXX"

#License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3.