Self-hostable blog for developers built on Wagtail and Django, with webpack, Bootstrap, and CodeMirror.
blogbootstrapdjangodockerhandcodedpythonself-hostedwagtailwebpack
1> **Archived.** This project is no longer in use and no longer maintained. Last updated April 2026.
2
3# Blog
4
5A self-hostable blog built on Wagtail for developers.
6
7
8## Motivation
9
10I was bored and felt like writing my own blog over the weekend.
11
12
13## Features
14
15- Top notch SEO using industry best practices and multiple scanners to detect
16 issues on a regular basis.
17- Built on Wagtail and Django, powering some of the largest websites in the
18 world. Wagtail is used by Google, NASA, MIT, Mozilla, and many others.
19- Customized for developers, makes use of CodeMirror for syntax highlighting and
20 on the admin panel for a clean code editing experience.
21- Easily adjusted to fit your needs with the use of well documented projects
22 like the above mentioned Wagtail and Django plus Bootstrap for the design and
23 easy to adjust hosting options using Docker.
24- Minimal network payloads, out of the box 100% scores on all lighthouse metrics
25 and most pages, even with a few images, are less than 300kB in size.
26
27
28## Requirements
29
30You need docker + docker-compose installed for a quick production start or you
31can figure out how we install and run things via the `Dockerfile` and set it up
32yourself.
33
34If you want to install things without docker then you'll need the following
35dependencies:
36
37- python
38- pipenv
39- node
40- yarn
41- chromium
42
43You can also check the `Dockerfile` for an exact list of dependencies and adjust
44package names for your desired platform.
45
46This is a standard Django project. If you know how to run Django, or want to
47look up any Django tutorial on how to run Django, you shouldn't have a problem
48getting this project running on almost anything.
49
50
51## Running locally
52
53If you have all of the above dependencies installed you can use my Makefile to
54run and install python and node dependencies locally. Running `make` will check
55that you have the proper dependencies installed and if not it will try and
56install them for you. It will then create you a fresh database and run
57everything.
58
59
60## Checking outdated dependencies
61
62This can be done in both yarn and pipenv with the following two commands:
63
64 pipenv update --outdated
65 yarn outdated
66
67You can then upgrade the outdated dependencies with the following two commands:
68
69 pipenv update
70 yarn upgrade
71
72I recommend testing everything after this to make sure it's all working.
73
74
75## Optimizing images with webp
76
77My development system runs Ubuntu so I installed the official webp utils from
78Google with `apt install webp`.
79
80 cwebp -q 90 -m 6 -o output.webp input.png
81
82
83## Using docker-compose
84
85The easiest way to run this project is to run it using
86`docker-compose up --build -d` if you have `docker-compose` and `docker`
87installed. This will start the server and have you running at port 8000. The
88first time you do this make sure you run migrations with
89`docker-compose run web python manage.py migrate`. Make sure you setup the
90`.env` file before running, you can copy the sample from
91`samplefiles/env.sample` into the root of the project as `.env` and change the
92variables.
93
94
95## Default user
96
97The default user is `admin` with the password `admin`.
98
99
100## Backups
101
102All data is stored in `/srv/data/blog/` and your repo is stored in
103`/srv/git/blog.git/`. You can backup both of these folders and you'll have
104a 100% backup of everything except changes you may have made to the `Caddyfile`
105and the `.env` file which should be easy enough to recreate but you can back
106those up too!
107
108
109## Support
110
111I won't be providing any user support for this project. I'm more than happy to
112accept good pull requests and fix bugs but I don't have the time to help people
113run or use this project. I appologize in advance for this. Maintaining
114mutliple OSS projects has taught me that I need to step back from trying to
115provide support to avoid burnout.
116
117
118## Server guide
119
120This quickstart requires that you have an Alpine Linux server running with a
121domain name pointed to it. I'm currently using Linode as my host since they
122support Alpine Linux nicely. If you don't want to use Linode or Alpine Linux
123you can use these instructions and just change the apk commands at the start to
124whatever Linux distro you're using.
125
126**IMPORTANT NOTE**: Change `blog.bythewood.me` to your domain name where
127relevant in these instructions.
128
129**TIP**: During the ufw portion to enable the firewall I recommend only allowing
130your IP address or your ISP's IP address range which you can find on whois
131lookups at the top. For example, replace `192.230.176.0/20` with your IP or your
132ISP's IP range.
133
134 ufw allow from 192.230.176.0/20 proto tcp to any port 22
135
136I allow my local ISP's range because I have a DHCP lease from them and I get
137tired of logging into my server from my hosting provider's UI to update it. It's
138good enough security and much better than nothing!
139
140Server:
141
142 apk update && apk upgrade && apk add docker docker-compose caddy git iptables ip6tables ufw
143 ufw allow 22/tcp && ufw allow 80/tcp && ufw allow 443/tcp && ufw --force enable
144 echo -e "#!/bin/sh\napk upgrade --update | sed \"s/^/[\`date\`] /\" >> /var/log/apk-autoupgrade.log" > /etc/periodic/daily/apk-autoupgrade && chmod 700 /etc/periodic/daily/apk-autoupgrade
145 rc-update add docker boot && service docker start
146 mkdir -p /srv/git/blog.git && cd /srv/git/blog.git && git init --bare
147
148Local:
149
150 git clone [email protected]:overshard/blog.git && cd blog
151 git remote remove origin && git remote add origin [email protected]:/srv/git/blog.git
152 git push --set-upstream origin master
153
154Server:
155
156 mkdir -p /srv/docker && cd /srv/docker && git clone /srv/git/blog.git blog && cd /srv/docker/blog
157 cp samplefiles/Caddyfile.sample /etc/caddy/Caddyfile && sed -i 's/blog.example.com/blog.bythewood.me/g' /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
158 cp samplefiles/env.sample .env && sed -i 's/blog.example.com/blog.bythewood.me/g' .env
159 cp samplefiles/post-receive.sample /srv/git/blog.git/hooks/post-receive
160 mkdir -p /srv/data/blog/db && chown -R 1000:1000 /srv/data/blog
161 docker-compose up --build --detach && docker-compose run web python3 manage.py migrate --noinput && docker-compose run web sqlite3 db.sqlite3 "PRAGMA journal_mode=WAL;" ".exit"
162 rc-update add caddy boot && service caddy start