As an introduction to Node.js for myself I’ve decided to write my own blog engine.

What Is It?

Inspired by Jekyll and Typeset, French Press is a simple Markdown based middleware module for Express. The source is licensed under the MIT license and available on the GitHub Page.

Getting Started

#### Install the module French Press works with the Express framework. To start using it with your existing Express application install the module via npm:

$ npm install french-press

Configure middleware

Now create a folder in your project for holding your posts, and configure and attache the middleware module to your Express application:

var express = require('express');
var fp = require('french-press');
...
var app = express();
...
app.use('/blog/', fp.blog(
  {
    postsDir: __dirname + '/posts',
    listTemplate: 'blogListTemplate',
    postTemplate: 'blogPostTemplate'
  }));

Create your templates

French Press requires two templates to be created, one for the listing of posts, and one for the display of a single post. The templates can be written in any of the template engines you have setup Express to work with. See the wiki for more information on configuring your templates.

Start writing posts

All you need to do now is create some posts. Posts are written in Markdown with font-matter headers (title and date are required). Here’s a basic example:

---
title: Hello World
date: 2013-09-01 13:00:00
---
# First Post!

New posts and changes to existing posts are automatically detected, and will immediately be available. Perma-links default to the posts title, but can be overridden when configuring the middleware.

Additional Info

Check out the GitHub Page for the source and more information.