                             README for miniBlog.pl

http://www.lostculture.net/NonScienceSoft/miniBlog.htm

This is a small Perl script based on ideas from blosxom (http://www.oreillynet.com/%7Erael/lang/perl/blosxom/) that generates html pages from a folder of text files. Rather than dynamically generating the pages with every view this script to deigned to be run either as need or from cron or at or some other schedular. It uses the Perl module HTML-Templates and works by reading in files containing text or html from a directory and generating the default page and a series of archives using a pre assigned template. The disadvantages of this approach is that it currently does not lend itself to syndication and that there are no permanent links to articles. But on the other hand I don't have to keep spitting my Dreamweaver template in two! Ultimately I feel that the script is less featured/useful than blosxom but that it works perfectly for me!

Requirements:
Perl
HTML::Templates
A webserver - does not have to be local

Usage:

On a *nix or MacOSX computer you will need to make miniBlog executable ( chmod 755 miniBlog.pl). Set the configuration variables in the first part of the script to match you directory setup. Make any additional directories that you might need.
There is one additional variable down on line 213 $Intro_gen that also needs to be configured. I pull that up to the top in a later release.

Make sure that you have a text file in the miniBlog "input" folder("blog" folder) then run the script. A main page will be generated and if you have enough entries to fill the first page additional archive pages will be generated in the "archive" folder. 

Text entries should contain a title on the first line and html in the body. Save the file with any name you like .txt eg myfile.txt or anotherfile.txt

You can call the script automatically with cron or some such or run it manually every time you save a new entry text.
