What is MyJekyllBlog?

MyJekyllBlog is a project to provide a SaaS web interface to Jekyll backed with a CMS and web hosting infrastructure.

What are the systems?

Web Panel

The web panel allows users of the service to create and manage their Jeykll blogs.

The following functionality should exist:

• Wizard to create a new blog
• Editor panel that lists articles
• Editor panel that lists pages
• Editor panel that allows creating a new article
• Editor panel that allows creating a new page
• Editor panel that allows editing an existing article
• Editor panel that allows editing an existing page
• Manager panel that shows last deployment
• Manager panel that allows deploying the blog
• Manager panel that allows adding a custom domain name to the blog
• Manager panel that shows list of commits and which one is deployed
• Manager panel that allows selecting an alternative commit and deploying it

Database Server

The database server holds the database for the Web Panel and for the Build Server.

Gitea Server

The gitea server will have user mapping between the Web Panel and Gitea. Users websites will be held as repos here.

Build Server

The build server will check out the repo, build the static site and deploy it to whichever Web Server it should be deployed to.

SSL Server

The SSL server will run certbot. The /.well-known directory should be proxied to this server so that HTTP challenges can be used.

Web Servers

Web servers will host static content for Jeykll blogs.

How does it work?

Create a new account on MyJekyllBlog

sequenceDiagram
    User ->>+Web Panel: Register with name, email, password
    Web Panel->>+Database: Create user account for panel
    Web Panel->>+Gitea Minion: Create Gitea User
    Web Panel->>-User: Log the user into their account

Deploy a Jekyll blog

sequenceDiagram
    Web Panel->>+Build Server: Build jeykll id X
    Build Server->>+Gitea Server: Checkout Repo
    Gitea Server-->>-Build Server: Get repo
    Build Server-->+Build Server: Build static site from repo
    Build Server-->+Web Server: Deploy website

Create a new post a Jekyll blog

Installation Guide

Step 1: Machine Selection

First, I should layout the servers. At least one panel, build, store and certbot server will be needed to run the platform. One or more webservers will be needed to serve blogs.

These servers should all be Debian 11 machines. I will also need a machine to install from, which should have git, ansible, and SSH access to all of the other machines.

I have choosen to lay out the machines as follows. The private IP addresses will be used to limit database access.

Machine	Public IP	Private IP	Domain
panel	45.79.91.170	192.168.134.89	panel.myjekyllblog.net
build	173.255.209.214	192.168.202.60	build.myjekyllblog.net
store	173.255.209.241	192.168.207.169	store.myjekyllblog.net
certbot	104.200.24.149	192.168.210.55	certbot.myjekyllblog.net
web-west	104.200.24.174	N/A	web-west.myjekyllblog.net
web-east	45.79.171.182	N/A	web-east.myjekyllblog.net

Each of these machines is now online, brought up on Linode with their default Debian 11 image.

Next I will need to checkout the repository and update the configuration file.

git clone ...
cd devops/ansible/
cp config.example.yml staging.yml
vim staging.yml

I named the configuration file staging.yml, since this will be a staging environment. One should pay special attention to go through this example file and update it with details of their network. Once this is complete, the installation should be smooth sailing with ansible. I use the following command to get everything installed.

 ansible-playbook -i staging.yml site.yml

Operations Guide