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PostOwl 🦉

PostOwl is an open-source web application that let's you create your own website for:

  • blogging (public posts)
  • sharing posts (share secret links with friends and notify them by email)
  • keeping a journal or diary (private posts)

All your writing in one place!

A key feature of PostOwl is 'in-place' editing that makes it super easy and fast to update your site.

Learn more about PostOwl on the website: https://www.postowl.com

Get your own PostOwl website

PostOwl is open-source software so you can deploy it to any web host you wish.

We'll be releasing a hosted version soon. Join the email newsletter to hear when it's ready.

Deploy to fly.io

PostOwl runs for free on fly.io which is one of the reasons we're recommending their platform for the first release. If you follow the steps on the documentation website you should have a live site in about 15 minutes.

Get updates by email

Hear about new releases and what's going on in the PostOwl community by joining the email newsletter.

Developing

Technology

PostOwl is a SvelteKit application inspired by editable.website using SQLite for the database. It's currently optimised for SvelteKit's adapter-node to enable deployment to Fly.io.

Requirements

  • Git
  • Node.js (minimum 18.16.0 LTS or 20.11.0 LTS recommended) or other JavaScript runtime (not tested).
  • SQLite

How to run PostOwl in development mode on your computer

  1. Clone this repo to a directory on your computer: git clone https://github.com/PostOwl/postowl.git
  2. Enter the directory you cloned the repo to: cd postowl
  3. Run npm install
  4. Rename .env.example to .env and edit for your environment
  5. Create the database with sqlite3 data/db.sqlite3 < scripts/schema.sql
  6. Run the dev server and open a new browser tab with npm run dev -- --open
  7. Sign in with the ADMIN_PASSWORD you set in .env

Exploring the database

PostOwl uses SQLite. Beekeeper studio is an excellent app for exploring the database during development.

Sending emails in development

PostOwl sends emails when you share a post with friends.

In development we recommend using mailpit to test email without sending real emails.

  1. Install mailpit
  2. Make sure mailpit is running (if installed with Homebrew on macOS run mailpit)
  3. Configure .env with the examples shown for mailpit in .env.example
  4. Start the local development server with npm run dev - the app is now running in dev mode and emails can be sent without encryption
  5. Use PostOwl to add a friend at http://localhost:5173/friends
  6. Create and send them a post
  7. View the email they would have received in the mailpit web interface at http://localhost:8025

Building

To create a production version of your app:

npm run build

You can preview the production build with npm run preview.

Why aren't there any tests?!

We can't promise we won't add tests in the future 😉

More seriously: PostOwl is currently an early technical preview, so we've been moving fast and breaking things.

Why is this in JavaScript not TypeScript?

We like JavaScript. That doesn't mean that PostOwl might not be converted to TypeScript sometime in the future.

Contributing

New contributors welcome! Join the Discussions or submit a PR. (We have opinions about what should be included in PostOwl, so it's best to discuss with first to see if a new feature will be accepted.)