NEWS, EDITORIALS, REFERENCE

Introducing Ultralight Blogging Platform

While this is not strictly a C64 or C64 OS related post, I wanted to mention that in building this website I wanted to stick to something really minimal. I am not a fan of big blogging packages or CMSes. Initially this site consisted of just one HTML file and a handful of resource files like images, css and some javascript files for footnotes, image zooming and PIWIK analytics.

After 7 posts it became clear to me that continuing to grow a single static HTML file was not going to work forever. Especially because each post can include new images which all end up being loaded on the first page. The first step to alleviate that problem was to switch to late-loading images. Images further down the page are only loaded from the server when you scroll those images into view. This helps, and it will continue to help to make the load on the server light. But it still won't work past a few tens of posts.

I took the opportunity to write the lightest weight blogging platform that I'm aware of. It's called UBL, Ultralight Blogging Platform. And I've decided to post the sourcecode on GitHub. It's got lots of useful features, including a new archive view, rolling most recent 10 posts on the front page, permanent links to individual posts and search via DuckDuckGo. But what I'm most excited about is embedding Disqus comments into the site. On the homepage, you'll see a comments button beside every post. This tells you how many comments there are to read, and if you click it you're taken to the single post view with comments at the bottom.

Please take advantage of the comments to give me feedback, ideas and encouragement as I develop C64 OS and related programs that make use of it.

One more plug for UBL before I stop talking about it. It uses a database-less design. All posts are stored in numbered .JSON and .HTML files stored in a /posts folder on the server. It is absolutely my intention that one will be able to blog from the C64 via a C64 OS blogging program, to a UBL blog. I look forward to that day.