Nim Website Creator

A quick website tool. Run the nim file and access your webpage. Website: https://nimwc.org

Features

Blogs and pages

• 1 Click Blogging posts directly from browser.
• 1 Click Static web pages directly from browser.
• WYSIWYG & Drag'n'Drop Editors with Summernote, CodeMirror or GrapesJS.
• Custom title, meta description and keywords for each page, SEO friendly.
• Custom head, navbar and footer, no hardcoded watermarks, links or logos.
• Upload/Download files and images (private or public), option to use MD5 CheckSum as filename.
• Libravatar/Gravatar support for profile photos builtin.
• 1 language for the whole stack, including high performance modules, scripting, devops, deploy, from WebAssembly to Assembly.

Security

• Self-Firejailing Web Framework (It Firejails itself) Best Linux Security integrated on the Core.
• 2 Factor Athentication TOTP
• Design by Contract, Contract Programming.
• Security Hardened by default (based from Gentoo Hardened and Debian Hardened, checked with hardening-check).
• Coded following the Power of 10: NASA Coding guidelines for safety-critical code (as much as possible).
• ReCAPTCHA (Optional)
• HoneyPot-Field
• BCrypt+Salt password hashing
• No user Tracking Analytics by default
• SQL Type-checked and Query-checked at compile-time, no SQL injections.
• No XML nor YAML nor ZIP used on the Core, No XML Vulnerabilities, No YAML Vulnerabilities, etc (you can still use XML and YAML and ZIP).
• Multiple users with different ranks, role based access control.
• Admin can choose how much CPU & RAM NimWC can use from the Admin Dashboard (using the compile flag -d:firejail)
• We recommend FreeOTP 2 Factor Athentication App because is Open Source (400Kb size), As alternative, try AndOTP (5Mb size).

Configuration

• Edit core or custom JS and CSS directly from browser, UI/UX Designer friendly.
• Log Viewer directly from browser.
• Auto-Rotating file Logger.
• Server Info Page for Admins.
• Force Server restart for Admins.
• Edit main config file directly from browser
• Recompilation without down times.
• Webserver hosting your page on 127.0.0.1:7000
• Colored output on the Terminal.
• Email notification on critical errors.

Plugins

• Plugin Store integrated
• Enable and disable plugins directly from browser. Open Source or Private Plugins.
• Plugin skeleton creator to create your own new plugins.
• Plugins can do anything you want on Frontend and Backend.
• Develop your own plugins - NimWC plugin repository

Database

• Postgres (if you are using the NimWC docker file, you do not need to install Postgres)
• SQLite

Performance

• High performance with low resources (RPi, VPS, cloud, old pc, etc).
• Runs on any non-Windows OS, Architecture and Hardware that can compile C code.
• Independent TechEmpower Benchmarks show Nim web server as one of the fastest in the world.
• High Availability design by default.
• Full Stack with the same programming language, including DevOps and Scripting.
• 0 Dependency binary (Postgres/SSL/WebP/Firejail required if using it).
• No /node_modules/, but very powerful builtin Templating engine.
• Compile-Time precomputed arbitrary function execution is used when possible.
• No Global Interpreter Lock, no single-Thread, no single-Core, no Interpreter. Use all your 32 CPU Cores.

Responsive

• Uses responsive Bulma CSS framework, supports Bootstrap CSS framework.
• JavaScript framework agnostic, use Nim, Karax, vanilla JS, you choose.

Other

• WebP automatic Image and Photo Optimizations.
• NGINX Config template.
• SystemD Service template.
• Vagrantfile template.
• Dockerfile template.

Requirements

To get started you only need:

• Linux (For Windows see Docker-for-Windows)
• Nim >= 1.0.0 (Stable Release)

Development dependencies (automatically installed by Nimble):

• bCrypt >= 0.2.1
• Contra >= 0.2.0
• datetime2human >= 0.2.2
• Jester >= 0.4.1
• Libravatar >= 0.4.0
• otp >= 0.1.1
• Firejail >= 0.5.0 (optional)
• reCAPTCHA >= 1.0.2 (optional)
• WebP >= 0.2.0 (optional)
• PackedJSON >= 0.1.0 (optional)

Foreing optional dependencies:

• webp (libwebp)
• firejail >= 0.9.58
• Xvfb (xorg-server-xvfb, required by firejail setting noX=)

OBS:

• Use Nim Stable Release, Devel may or may not work.

• When using Firejail and enabling/disabling a plugin a manual full restart of NimWC is required. It is therefore not advised to enable/disable plugins in the browser when using Firejail.

Install

Install Nim

To compile and install you need Nim. You can easily install Nim using choosenim with:

curl https://nim-lang.org/choosenim/init.sh -sSf | sh

Install NimWC

You only need to perform 1a or 1b or 1c - not both of them.

1a) Install with Nimble

# Install nimwc with nimble
nimble install nimwc

# Edit the config.cfg accordingly
# (change the confg.cfg path to your nimble folder and the correct package version)
nano ~/.nimble/pkgs/nimwc-5.5.1/config/config.cfg

# Run nimwc
# (to add an Admin append the arg "newadmin": nimwc --newadmin)
# (to include some standard pages: nimwc --insertdata)
nimwc

# Login
127.0.0.1:7000/login

1b) Compile

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ThomasTJdev/nim_websitecreator
cd nim_websitecreator

# Generate and edit the config.cfg accordingly
cp config/config_default.cfg config/config.cfg
nano config/config.cfg

# Install dependencies
nimble install jester recaptcha bcrypt datetime2human otp firejail webp, contra

# Compile nimwc
nim c nimwc.nim

# Run nimwc
# (to add an Admin append the arg "newadmin": nimwc --newadmin)
# (to include some standard pages: nimwc --insertdata)
./nimwc

# Login
127.0.0.1:7000/login

1c) Curl

This will guide you through the installation.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThomasTJdev/nim_websitecreator/master/devops/autoinstall.sh -sSf | sh

OR

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThomasTJdev/nim_websitecreator/master/devops/autoinstall.sh -sSfLO && echo "6cc7510305db7b0ae5e3755137e71c23c7e08829264ddfb82702e6cac297f1063b46c48c01eafb16156c27a53aa23d1737c34f354ae1834c8498f5bd64b81b3c autoinstall.sh" | sha512sum -c - && sh ./autoinstall.sh

Use

Arguments

These arguments should be prepended to executable file, e.g. ./nimwc cdata

• --showconfig = Show parsed INI configuration and compile options.
• --newadmin = Add the Admin user.
• --gitupdate = Updates and force a hard reset.
• --initplugin = Create plugin skeleton inside tmp/.
• --vacuumdb = Vacuum database and continue (database maintenance).
• --backupdb = Compressed full backup of database.
• --backupdb-gpg = Compressed signed full backup of database.
• --newdb = Generates the database with standard tables (does not override or delete tables). newdb will be initialized automatic, if no database exists.
• --insertdata = Insert standard data, e.g --insertdata bulma (this will override existing data)
  • bulma = Use Bulma CSS, No JS required
  • bootstrap = Use Bootstrap and jQuery
  • water = Water CSS framework, No JS, HTML Classless (No classes on HTML required)

Compile options:

These options are only available at compiletime:

• -d:rc = Recompile. NimWC is using a launcher, it is therefore needed to force a recompile.
• -d:adminnotify = Send error logs (ERROR) to the specified admin email.
• -d:dev = Development.
• -d:devemailon = Send email when -d:dev is activated.
• -d:demo = Used on public test site Nim Website Creator. This option will override the database every 1 hour with the standard data.
• -d:gitupdate = Updates directly from Git and force a hard reset.
• -d:postgres = Use Postgres database instead of SQLite.
• -d:contracts = Checks pre- and post-conditions when compiled with -d:release.
• -d:hardened = Hardens security, requires -d:contracts. Performance cost ~20% max.
• -d:packedjson = Use PackedJSON instead of std lib JSON. Performance optimization.

User profiles

There are 3 main user profiles:

• User
• Moderator
• Admin

The access rights below applies to main program. Plugins can have their own definition of user rights.

Blog

You can easily add and edit blogpages. The blogpages support metadata: meta description and meta keywords. It is also possible to specify a category and tags.

Blog sorting

In the settings menu you can specify how your blogposts should be sorted, e.g. on modfied date in ascending order.

Blog searching

To only show blogpost with a specific name, tag or category, you have to append the criteria to the URL. It is not possible to combine these.

website.com/blog?name=nim
website.com/blog?category=article
website.com/blog?tags=code

Plugins

Multiple plugins are available. You can download them within the program at <webpage>/plugins/repo.

The plugin repository are located here: NimWC plugin repository

Shortcuts

When editing a blogpage or a normal page press Ctrl+S to save.

GrapesJS

GrapesJS is a Web Builder Framework. To use GrapeJS with a CSS framework (Bulma or Bootstrap), you have to edit public/js/grapejs_custom.js and public/js/grapejsbs4.min.js. Bootstrap support in public/js/grapejs_custom.js is commented out.

DevOps

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/nimwc.service

sudo systemctl enable nimwc
sudo systemctl start nimwc
sudo systemctl status nimwc

How to Firejail

# Arch (package manager)
sudo pacman -S firejail

# Ubuntu (built files)
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firejail/0.9.58-1 # <-- download
sudo apt install ./firejail_0.9.58-1_arm64.deb

# Compile
git clone https://github.com/netblue30/firejail.git
cd firejail
./configure && make && sudo make install-strip

How to Jester

https://github.com/juancarlospaco/nim-presentation-slides/blob/master/ejemplos/basico/jester/hello_web_3.nim#L38

Resources

Videos

Stars

License

NimWC uses The Peer Production License (PPL).

PPL is derived from the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. However unlike CC-BY-NC-SA, PPL demands reciprocation (whether monetary or otherwise) from non-contributing commercial entities (aka Big Corporations). This means, that mega-corporation cannot just take all your code, rename it, and sell it without contributing back to you.

The Peer Production License is a reciprocity-based license by which commons are freely accessible to those who contribute to create them, while third party non-contributing entities profiting from these commons can be charged a license fee to sustain the project in the long run.

For all other meanings of license, is very similar to MIT license.

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