What is MyJekyllBlog?

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

Meet The Servers

Server	Description	Services	Talks To
Panel	Runs customer-facing web interface	mjb.web, nginx	build, store

graph TD
    subgraph Panel[Panel Server]
        subgraph Panel_Uses[Overview]
            pu_a(Runs customer-facing web interface)
        end
        subgraph Panel_Services[Services]
            ps_a(mjb.web - MJB::Web Web Application)
            ps_b(nginx)
        end
        Panel_Uses --> Panel_Services
    end

    subgraph Build[Build Server]
        b_a(Hosts MJB::Web WebApp)
    end

graph TD
    subgraph Store[Store Server]
        store_a[Hosts MJB::Web WebApp]
    end
    subgraph CertBot[CertBot Server]
        certbot_a[Hosts MJB::Web WebApp]
    end

graph TD
    subgraph webserver[Web Server]
        webserver_a[Hosts MJB::Web WebApp]
    end

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/
mkdir -p env/staging
cp config.example.yml env/staging/inventory.yml
vim env/staging/inventory.yml

I named the configuration file env/staging/inventory.yml, since this will be a staging environment. I placed this in its own directory because some environment specific files will be stored in the inventory directory, and keeping seperate directories will prevent file clobbering. One should pay special attention to go through this example config 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 env/staging/inventory.yml site.yml

This command took about two and a half hours to complete, it should largely setup the whole platform across all of the machines.

Step 2: Manual Steps

Now the ansible playbook has run successfully, and all of the machines are set up.

During the installation process, an SSH keypair was created. The public key must be added to the Gitea user that was setup. This must be done through the Gitea web panel.

1. Login to Gitea on the store server, using the credentials for gitea user/pass from the inventory file.
2. Click the user drop down in the upper right
3. Click Settings from the drop down menu
4. Click "SSH / GPG Keys"
5. Click "Add Key" under "Manage SSH Keys"
6. Type a title
7. Paste the contents of env/staging/files/ssh/id_rsa.pub
8. Click to add the key

Once this is done, you'll need to create the mjb organization.

1. Click the + Plus button drop down
2. Click "New Organization"
3. Name the organization "mjb"
4. Click "Create Organization"

Everything should be setup now.

Step 3: Confirm It All Works!

1. Create a user account
2. Create a blog
3. Delete a post

Development Guide

MJB::Web Panel Development

As root you will need to stop the MJB::Web app from running in production.

systemctl stop mjb-web

As the manager user you can run the application in development mode.

cd mjb/Web
morbo ./script/mjb --listen http://127.0.0.1:8080

Now it will automatically reload when you make changes to the libraries and templates. Additionally, it will show stack traces during crashes and debug information in your terminal.

Jekyll

You can run Jekyll by getting into a build server and running the following:

alias jekyll="podman run -ti --rm -v .:/srv/jekyll -e JEKYLL_ROOTLESS=1 docker.io/jekyll/jekyll jekyll"

Once you've done that, jekyll command will work.

Operations Guide