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Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

brislink.github.io

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Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#34

Post by brickcap »

jonsterling wrote: post #33

This looks rather neat. FYI, the type rendering in the screenshots is really terrible—I'd suggest re-rendering in something different.

You mean the the themes? Well I just added them to demonstrate that all you need to is change the css from boostrap to bootswatch in order to change the theme.

http://bootswatch.com/

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#35

Post by atmosx »

astrowilliam wrote: post #8

How secure is this platform compared to say something like Wordpress?

Static engines: * Do one thing _good_ (i.e. blog) * Fewer lines of code, which means: * Easier to maintain * Easier to read * Easier to customize using small chunks of raw code

Dynamic engines: * Do many things (i.e. having multiple authors, multiple formats, visual editors, plugins, etc.) * Many more (as in x^5) lines of code, which means: * * Harder to maintain * * Easier to use for _non programmers_ * * Easy to customize SOME things (apply a theme), HARD to customize the whole thing properly (you need to read huge chunks of code that might break if you change them) --

The above reasons make Wordpress pretty much insecure compared to a Static website (i.e. Jekyll engine like octopress). Of course you could have a bloated wordpress websites where all it's plugins are revised and secure while you could have a static website where it's running buggy JavaScript which reveals your IP to the NSA (random example pick) but the % of having a bug in a bigger (in terms of lines of code) app is way higher.

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#36

Post by nevinera »

I set it up just now, and it was very easy to get moving. I'm no ops master, but it only took a few minutes, and it's a bit nicer than the homerolled solution I had been using. My writeup is on my new blog at http://nevinera.net/trying-out-specter

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#37

Post by brickcap »

nevinera wrote: post #36

I set it up just now, and it was very easy to get moving. I'm no ops master, but it only took a few minutes, and it's a bit nicer than the homerolled solution I had been using. My writeup is on my new blog at http://nevinera.net/trying-out-specter

Why thank you sir for this detailed write up! You did a great job.

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#38

Post by brickcap »

nevinera wrote: post #36

I set it up just now, and it was very easy to get moving. I'm no ops master, but it only took a few minutes, and it's a bit nicer than the homerolled solution I had been using. My writeup is on my new blog at http://nevinera.net/trying-out-specter

I have a question...

>Specter takes the elegant/lazy approach of not using sessions at all - access to edit and create pages is entirely via url, and permission to actually perform those changes is granted by including a 'secret' (a password) in the form. It's not the most secure form of defense (I'm not using ssl, so a wireless sniffer could easily determine my password, for example), but its sufficient for a nonprofessional.

Is there something that I can do to make it more secure but still follow the lazy approach. I am asking cause I use heroku which is not secure as well.

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#39

Post by nevinera »

brickcap wrote: post #38
nevinera wrote: post #36

I set it up just now, and it was very easy to get moving. I'm no ops master, but it only took a few minutes, and it's a bit nicer than the homerolled solution I had been using. My writeup is on my new blog at http://nevinera.net/trying-out-specter

I have a question... >Specter takes the elegant/lazy approach of not using sessions at all - access to edit and create pages is entirely via url, and permission to actually perform those changes is granted by including a 'secret' (a password) in the form. It's not the most secure form of defense (I'm not using ssl, so a wireless sniffer could easily determine my password, for example), but its sufficient for a nonpro…

I believe the standard approach is to hash the password in the browser and submit the hash for comparison - then if somebody observes the transaction they will only have gained access to the blog, and not everything with which it shares a password.

On the other side, it is typically better not to store the password on the server either. You could accomplish that by giving a utility to store a hash in a file, but that's a bit heavy I guess.

I meant for a nonprofessional /blogger/, incidentally, not a nonprofessional coder :-)

Re: Specter – A minimal, elegant and free Markdown-enabled blogging platform

#40

Post by diminoten »

Just deployed it for an internal work blog (just happened to see this particular post at the right time), and I love new projects so I'll use it for awhile and see what I see.

Obviously it'd be "nice" to have some better contributor management, and instead of forcing me to manipulate the URL to do stuff it'd be "nice" to just click buttons, but frankly I don't care much about any of that.

Real feature request: Language specific syntax highlighting for the code bits. I'd like my snippets to come with highlighting as I explain stuff. JavaScript, Python, C, HTML to start, if you have to pick some languages. :)

Also I notice at the bottom of your blog an rrs and atom feed set of links. any plans on implementing that globally?

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