Using BasHTML Plugins
The plugin system for BasHTML was designed to be easy to use. To use a plugin, just create a plugins directory and drop .sh files into it. There is a complimentary BasHTML Plugins repository that offers several plugins I hope will be useful.
Because some of the plugins require configuration, it is advised to read the comments at the top of the file before using it. The files from the plugins repository all end with a .txt extension, and must be changed to .sh to become enabled. Here are instructions for using the sync plugin to make it extremely simple to edit locally, then push to the server.
BasHTML and Social Media
Although the plugin system makes BasHTML extremely powerful, there is one thing I was still wondering about. In several other platforms, like WordPress, there are plugins that make it possible to announce new writing using social media. I could very easily write a plugin to announce after the post command completes, but if you happen to write on the local computer, and wait for a few minutes to sync to the server, there would be a link to a nonexistent article until the sync actually took place. So, how to solve this problem?
BasHTML Reborn
After a lot of thought and hours of coding, I decided to give BasHTML a huge overhaul. The new code is a direct fork of Bashblog by Carlos Fenollosa. I have several reasons for the rewrite, some of which are below.
- The website layout is well designed by default. As a blind coder, it is hard to make sure that pages look good visually.
- All the page building, tags, etc is already done.
- With the infrastructure already in place, I can focus mainly on adding the features I wanted the original BasHTML to have.
A New Home on the Web
For years, I have ran a site, stormdragon.tk. The .tk TLDs are provided by Freenom for free. For several years, this was working great.
One day, some friends had their domains taken for no reason, and had a lot of difficulty in getting them back. Freenom is not known for its excellent customer service. The taken domains all pointed to less than reputable destinations on the web, which further compounded the problem. No one wants to build a web presence, then pull a switch to one of these other sites.