How can I make a self contained blog?

January 17, 2009 2:28 PM

Is there a one page, databaseless blog?

I would like to have a page that I can update easily (from my browser), and does not use a database.
Ideally, this page would entirely self contained (the editing and the viewing part).
Does such a page exist?

I want something with similar ease of use that opening a textfile and editing the file has, except with rich text, and in my browser.

posted by ooklala to computers & internet (12 answers total)

TiddlyWiki and its variants, including TiddlyWiki on a Stick.
posted by webhund at 2:45 PM on January 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

"Entirely self-contained" and on one single page is probably difficult. If you're looking for simple blogging software without a database backend, search for "flat-file" solutions like these.
If you want an browser-editable page, try the Edit this Page PHP script.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 2:50 PM on January 17, 2009 [2 favorites]

PMWiki is a piece of piss to use. I built a rather nice wedding website with it in a couple of days (mostly just typing content in, the configuration took ten minutes). It's a single PHP file, and uses wiki markup.

It won't be a 'blog' in terms of having content that can be output as a feed or anything though, but it will be an easily updated page (or pages).
posted by Happy Dave at 2:58 PM on January 17, 2009 [1 favorite]

A couple years back, I experimented with Pivot. Written in PHP, no database necessary and dead simple.
posted by JaredSeth at 3:14 PM on January 17, 2009

Dokuwiki can do this.
posted by Xhris at 4:47 PM on January 17, 2009

Also, try http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ which is a single HTML file. I've personally used multiple iterations of this.
posted by nmabry at 7:15 PM on January 17, 2009

TiddlyWiki Link
posted by nmabry at 7:16 PM on January 17, 2009

One possible issue with a TiddlyWiki blog over time could be its file size and loading times. The IncludePlugin could help, especially with archived posts.
posted by lmm at 2:07 AM on January 18, 2009

What did you mean by "one page", just for clarification? If you've made 100 posts, people would just see one 100-post-long page? And the same for 1,000 posts or 10,000? Or would post 1 just disappear when you added post 101?

I'm just saying, it's not sustainable for a really long-term blog.

Nobody's mentioned Bloxsom, so I will.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:56 PM on January 18, 2009

yup... tiddkywiki.
posted by gonzo_ID at 3:14 PM on January 18, 2009

I may be missing the point, but if the end goal is to have a blog you don't need to administer, have you thought about something like Blogger or Wordpress.com? I don't think these answer the 'everything on one page' request, but you won't have to worry about where the data is being stored for either of them (note that with Wordpress.com I'm not talking about the download-and-self-install package from wordpress.org). Also, what about a more 'social' service like Twitter, where all you do is type what's on your mind and people who are interested can subscribe to your Twitter stream to get your updates.
posted by planetthoughtful at 9:51 PM on January 18, 2009

I tried EditThisPagePHP which seems to work well...

What I want is a page that is simple (the ease of use of one file) and can have simple quick changes made to it. I don't really need themes (just CSS and such), and it seems that EditThisPagePHP is best so far... (if only the editing page were more simple...)
posted by ooklala at 6:20 PM on January 20, 2009