BigDataBoutique / Elastiquill

ElastiQuill is a modern blog engine built on top of Elasticsearch

Features:

• Fully featured blog engine - posts, comments and replies to comments
• Anti-spam with Akismet and Recaptcha
• Medium-like writing interface
• Blog analytics 100% powered by Elastic
• Fully customizable design and layout via handlebars templates
• Support for content pages and a contact form
• Password-less admin interface (social login / SSO)
• Cross-posting between other blogs and Medium
• Social posting integration (Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit)
• Built-in backup and full database dump
• Content caching
• Themes support

Demo: https://elastiquill.bigdataboutique.com

Deploying

The easiest way to deploy ElastiQuill is to use the official Docker image:

docker pull bigdataboutique/elastiquill

Instructions for running on Kubernetes are available under _k8s/.

Set up admin login

Google

First, you will need to have a Google project and to enable Google+ APIs for it. Go to https://console.developers.google.com/apis/dashboard, click Enable APIs and Services. Search for google plus and enable the Google+ API.

Once that is done, go to https://console.developers.google.com/apis/credentials, click Credentials -> OAuth Client ID -> Web Application. Set:

• Authorized JavaScript origins to hostname
• Authorized redirect URIs to https://hostname/api/auth/google/callback

Where hostname is your blog DNS. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret and add them to your config.yml file.

Github

Go to https://github.com/settings/applications/new to create a new application.

Set:

• Homepage URL to hostname
• Authorization callback URL to hostname/api/auth/github/callback

Where hostname is your blog DNS. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret and add them to your config.yml file.

Themes

ElastiQuill supports loading custom themes to override the default provided theme or any part of it.

Themes are using the Handlebars syntax, and all view files are expected to have the .hbs extension.

Theme structure:

theme-root/
|- layouts/    # contains the layout files, default layout name is "main"
|- partials/   # partias for the layout and pages, you can override existing or create new
|- public/     # public assets to serve (CSS, JS, images, etc)
| contact.hbs  # Handlebars views you can override as needed

You can use the default view as a base (under backend/src/views/base) or create your own from scratch. ElastiQuill will expect your theme to be under the path configured as blog.theme-path in your config.yml file.

Examples for custom ElastiQuill themes:

• https://github.com/BigDataBoutique/elastiquill-demo-theme
• https://github.com/synhershko/elastiquill-code972-theme

Integration with social networks

You can connect your Linkedin, Twitter and Reddit accounts to Elastiquill to repost your blogposts from the admin panel.

Linkedin

• Go to https://www.linkedin.com/developers/apps/new and create an app with default settings
• Under OAuth 2.0 settings, add a redirect URL http://localhost:5000/api/connect/linkedin/callback. Change http://localhost:5000 to your blog.url configuration.
• In the app page, select the Auth tab. Copy the Client ID and Client Secret and add them to your config.yml file.

Twitter

• Go to https://developer.twitter.com/en/apps/create
• Set Callback URL to http://localhost:5000/api/social/twitter/callback. Change http://localhost:5000 to your blog.url configuration.
• Sign in with Twitter can be left disabled.
• In the app page, select the Keys and tokens tab. Generate both consumer API and access token keys and copy all four to your config.yml file (see configuration variables below).

Reddit

• Go to https://www.reddit.com/prefs/apps/ and create a web app.
• Set redirect uri to http://localhost:5000/api/connect/reddit/callback. Change http://localhost:5000 to your blog.url configuration.
• Copy Client ID (code under web app line) and Client Secret and add them to your config.yml file.

Medium

• Request access to API and create an app as described here.
• Set callback URL to http://localhost:5000/api/connect/medium/callback. Change http://localhost:5000 to your blog.url configuration.
• Copy Client ID and Client Secret and add them to your config.yml file.

Facebook

• Go to https://developers.facebook.com/apps and create a new app.
• Under basic settings, add your blog.url configuration to App Domains input.
• Copy App ID and add them to your config.yml file.

Configuration

All values in config.yml file can be overrided by ENV variables when they are set.
See config.yml for a sample configuration file.

Running locally

The easiest way is to run via docker-compose:

docker-compose up

• Please note that before you can create and start the containers for the first time, you might need to create a default docker network: docker network create blog

You might need to run the following on your machine if Elasticsearch refuses to run: sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144.

To build and run the blog engine in Docker:

docker build . -t elastic-blog-engine
docker run -p 5000:5000 -v /path/to/config.yml:/etc/elastiquill/config.yml elastiquill

Configuration file will be looked up at /etc/elastiquill/config.yml unless you set the CONFIG_PATH environment variable.

Alternatively, you can run the engine without Docker. Build the admin panel frontend

cd admin-frontend
npm install && npm run build

And run the backend

cd backend
npm install
npm run production