tens-city

tens.city

A Minimal Blog Platform 🏕️

Tens City is a simple, elegant blog platform built on markdown files and content-addressable storage. Write in markdown, publish instantly—no database, no complexity.

Features

• Markdown with frontmatter - Write posts as .md files with YAML metadata
• Beautiful, responsive design - Modern card-based layout
• Schema.org JSON-LD - Automatic structured data generation for SEO
• Server-side rendering - Fast HTML generation from markdown
• RSS feeds - Automatic feed generation per author and site-wide
• Static file serving - Simple, secure blog hosting
• No authentication required - Pure static blog viewer

Quick Start

# Build the webserver
make build

# Start server
./webserver -addr :8080 -store data -content content/posts -base-url http://localhost:8080

# Access blog
# Home: http://localhost:8080
# Posts list: http://localhost:8080/posts
# Specific post: http://localhost:8080/posts/your-slug
# JSON-LD: http://localhost:8080/posts/your-slug.jsonld
# Site-wide RSS: http://localhost:8080/posts.rss
# Author RSS: http://localhost:8080/u/{author}/posts.rss

Configuration

Command-Line Flags

The webserver supports the following configuration options:

• -addr - Server address (default: :8080)
• -store - Filesystem store directory (default: data)
• -content - Content directory for markdown blog posts (default: content/posts)
• -base-url - Base URL for the server (default: http://localhost:8080)
• -index-limit - Maximum number of posts to show in index (default: 20, use 0 for no limit)

Example:

./webserver -addr :8080 -store data -content content/posts -base-url http://localhost:8080 -index-limit 10

Environment Variables

• INDEX_LIMIT - Maximum number of posts to show in index (overrides the -index-limit flag default)

Example:

INDEX_LIMIT=10 ./webserver -addr :8080 -store data -content content/posts

Post Ordering

Posts in the index (both at /posts/index.jsonld and /posts) are automatically sorted by:

1. Date Published (descending - newest first)
2. Title (ascending - alphabetically for posts with the same date)

This ensures your latest content appears first while maintaining a consistent, predictable order.

Writing Posts

Create markdown files in content/posts/ with YAML frontmatter:

---
title: My First Post
description: A great blog post
datePublished: 2025-11-03T00:00:00Z
author:
  name: Your Name
  type: Person
tags:
  - example
  - blog
slug: my-first-post
---

# My First Post

Your content goes here!

Philosophy: Tent City

• Not skyscrapers; actual encampments
• Anyone can stake a corner — no permission required
• Minimal structure that belongs to you
• No HOA, no governance tokens: just a tarp and a hook to keep your stuff dry

Basic Shelter (Software Terms)

The "lean-to of sticks" is the absolute minimum runtime that lets something simply live.

Concrete guarantees:

• Each post gets a stable URL
• Content is static (only files)
• It is addressable (stable URL)
• Served straight off disk — no app server trying to own content

Maps to:

• Filesystem-based
• Static web hosting
• The city is literally a filesystem tree

Principles

• Provide stable, non-transient spots
• Keep the runtime minimal and non-opinionated
• Serve static files directly from disk with a generic viewer

Development

Build and Run

# Build the webserver
make build

# Run tests
make test

# Format, vet, test, and build
make dev

# Start the server
./webserver -addr :8080 -store data -content content/posts -base-url http://localhost:8080

Makefile Targets

• make build - Build webserver binary
• make test - Run all tests
• make fmt - Format Go code
• make vet - Run go vet
• make check - Format, vet, and test
• make clean - Clean build artifacts
• make run-webserver - Build and run webserver

Server Options

• -addr - Server address (default: :8080)
• -store - Filesystem store directory (default: data)
• -content - Content directory for markdown posts (default: content/posts)
• -base-url - Base URL for the server (default: http://localhost:8080)

Routes

• GET / - Blog home page with post grid
• GET /posts - List all posts
• GET /posts/index.jsonld - JSON-LD index of all posts
• GET /posts/{slug} - Individual post as HTML
• GET /posts/{slug}.jsonld - Individual post as JSON-LD
• GET /u/{user}/posts.rss - RSS feed for user's posts

License

See LICENSE file for details.