Youtube-Blog

A blogging site optimized for YouTubers.

This platform provides a mobile-friendly interface and offers various features to enhance your blogging experience. With Youtube-Blog, you can easily manage your content, convert Markdown to HTML, integrate ads, and engage with your audience through comments and likes.

Features

Mobile friendly: Enjoy a seamless browsing experience on any device.
Admin endpoint: Easily manage your content through the admin endpoint.
File Management endpoint: Efficiently handle file management tasks.
Markdown to HTML conversion: Convert your Markdown content to HTML for a visually appealing presentation.
Content's subscription: Allow users to subscribe to your content for regular updates.
Ads integration support: Monetize your blog by integrating ads into your articles.
Auto SEO: Optimize your blog for search engines automatically.
Comment Section: Engage with your audience through a comment section for each article.
Views count per article: Keep track of the number of views each article receives.
Likes count per article: Enable users to show their appreciation by liking your articles.

Other minor features include:

Auto-generate Audio & Video HTML tags: Easily embed audio and video content in your articles.
Live Article Search: Quickly find articles using the search functionality.
Social Media Integration: Share your articles on various social media platforms.
M-M Category-Blog relation: Categorize your articles for easy navigation.
Auto-rank trending blogs: Highlight trending blogs to attract more readers.

Technologies used

Youtube-Blog is built using the following technologies:

W3CS: Web standards for HTML and CSS.
W3JS: Web standards for JavaScript.
HTML: Markup language for creating web pages.
FLASK: Python-based web framework for building web applications.

Installation and Usage

Installation

To install Youtube-Blog, make sure you have Python 3.8 or higher installed on your system. Then, follow these steps:

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/Simatwa/Youtube-Blog.git

Install the required dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

Before running the site, you need to set up the environment variables. Edit the env file according to your preferences and rename it to .env.

To set up an admin account for content management, run the following command:

flask user create-admin

Follow the prompts to create the admin account. Once done, start the server by running:

flask run

You can access the site at http://localhost:5000, and the admin endpoint at http://localhost:5000/admin.

Further info

To insert audio or video in an article, use the format %(file_n)s, where n is the file number at upload.

To append a path to an image or any other file (excluding video and audio), use the format %(category_n)s, where category can be either file or image, and n is the media position at upload.

To insert ads into an article, use the tag {ads} anywhere within the article. You can use the tag multiple times to display multiple ads.

Note: Script-based tags are rendered immediately before the </body> tag and not within the {ads} tag like non-script ads code.

Usage Tips

An article without a cover photo, default one will be used.
For long titled articles, consider using a large cover photo so as to avoid squeezing up
Remember to include <figcaption>{Figure Caption}</figcaption> in your images. Not mandatory though
Remember if a Youtube link video is available, the video will be displayed instead of cover photo at timeline and as last entry on article page.
Sometimes the %(image_n)s may fail to be functional. So counter check before publishing articles. To be fixed soon
You can customize admin theme using the Bootswatch themes by modifying the FLASK_ADMIN_SWATCH at your env file. Popular themes include : cerulean, flatly, spacelab, cosmo, journal, united, sandstone, yeti and lumen.
For non-mobile devices, just scale down the window size to acccess the site contents.
Remember to set a new screte key for every web-app.

Disclaimer

Youtube-Blog is a micro-blog site and may be vulnerable to certain attacks. The developer(s) of this site will not be liable for any loss or illegal concerns arising from the commercial or personal use of this site.

Conclusion

For hosting I recommend using pythonanywhere since they feature a free plan with lots of goodies such as free ssl certificates and zero lifetime hosting charges!
If you are a blogger looking to monetize your site through ads, I recommend using Adsterra.
Contributions are always welcome. Help me fix my bad code by submitting a pull request or you can as well submit an issue.

Note By the way I have my site up and running using this codebase check it out here.

AOB

This is my first big Flask project and it was fun creating it using the tools I had access to in my Android Phone i.e Pydroid 3 IDE to write this kind of stuff along with Termux to ensure it reaches you here on Github.

Dedication

I'm delighted to dedicate this work to my loving mom Sarah, who ensured I have sufficient time in creating this during my long holiday and my understanding girlfriend Eunice, for entertaining my late replies and picking-up my late-night calls as well.

Made with ❤️

Simatwa / Youtube-Blog