PHP
Minimal Blogging Application For Developers.

Canvas

Canvas is a minimal blogging application for developers. It attempts to make blogging simple and enjoyable by utilizing the latest technologies and keeping the administration as simple as possible with the primary focus on writing.

Requirements

Canvas has a few system requirements:

• PHP >= 5.5.9
• PDO compliant database (SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite)

Installation

Getting Canvas up and running is simple. You can choose either of the following installation options:

Option 1 - Use Composer:

composer create-project austintoddj/canvas

Option 2 - Download the repository:

git clone https://github.com/austintoddj/canvas.git

If you chose Option 1, skip this step. If you chose Option 2, run the following command from the project root:

composer install

Make sure to modify the permissions of the storage directory:

sudo chmod o+w -R storage

To enable uploads on the site, give ownership of the uploads directory to the web server:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data public/uploads

Configuring Canvas

You will need to create a new .env file and fill in the necessary variables:

cat .env.example > .env; vim .env;

Generate a key for your application:

php artisan key:generate

Settings

Open up Canvas/config/blog.php and define a few configuration options for your blog.

Note: The 'title' of your blog is used as the domain to create the default user email.

When you first set up Canvas, you may want to change the default user information right away. To update user information including setting a new password (Recommended), edit the file Canvas/database/seeds/UsersTableSeeder.php and save it. Make sure to re-run migrations and seeds if you have already run them.

Run the database migrations:

php artisan migrate --seed

Theming Canvas

Adding or modifying styles with Canvas is a breeze. None of this needs to be done out of the box, it simply works on its own. But if you're feeling a little creative and want to make it stand out more, follow these steps:

Install the project dependencies via npm:

sudo npm install

Install Gulp globally:

sudo npm install --global gulp-cli

After you make any modifications to the files in Canvas/resources/assets/less/, run gulp:

gulp

Disqus Comments

To enable Disqus comments on your blog, you need to have a unique shortname. For more information, check out the Official Documentation.

Once you have registered your site and have a shortname, use it to set the DISQUS_NAME key in your .env file.

Changelog

Detailed changes for each release are documented in the release notes.

License

Canvas is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.