ttbp (feels)
benharri

FEELS MANUAL

ttbp stands for “tilde.town blogging platform”, the original working
name for this project. the complete codebase is available on github[1].

ttbp runs from the command line, providing a hub for writing personal
blog posts and reading posts written by other users of tilde.club. it’s
a little bit like livejournal or dreamwidth or tumblr. you can opt to
publish your posts to a public html file hosted on your tilde page, to
tilde.club’s gopher server, or keep all your entries private to the
tilde.club server.

this is a project that runs on tilde.club, so all users of this program
are expected to operate under the tilde.club code of conduct[2].
content/personal issues should be worked out according to the CoC, with
support from the administrative team[3] if needed.

support

if you’re having trouble getting started, or run into program errors or
strange behavior, please hop on irc and contact ben or deepend.

there’s also a function from the main menu that lets you send
feedback/inquiries to me directly; this uses email, which is what i’ll
respond to.

writing entries

entries are recorded as plaintext files in your ~/.ttbp/entries
directory. ttbp will use your selected editor to open and write files;
each day is its own entry, like a diary page. at midnight for whatever
timezone you’ve set for your user account on tilde.club, you’ll get a
fresh entry. if you don’t write any feels on a particular day, no
entries will show up there.

when you save and quit the text editor, your entry will automatically
propagate to the global feels list; if you’ve opted to publish your
feels to html/gopher, those files will update immediately. you can
always go back to the current day’s entry and edit/add as you’d like,
but older entries will not be available for editing from ttbp.

(since files are just stored as plaintext in your directory, it’s
possible to edit and move old entries directly from the command line.
however, changing old entries might cause strange things to happen with
timestamps. the main program looks at the filename first for setting the
date, then the last modified time to sort recent posts. it expects
YYYMMDD.txt as the filename; anything else won’t show up as a valid
entry. yes, this means you can post things out of date order by creating
files with any date you want.)

general entry-writing notes

-   you can use markdown[4]
-   you can use html
-   you can also put things between <!-- comments --> to have them show
    up in the feed but not render in a browser (but people can still
    read them with view-source)

reading other feels

the browse global feels feature shows the ten most recent entries that
anyone has written on ttbp. this list is only accessible from within
tilde.club, although individual entries may be posted to html or gopher.

you can also pull up a list of a single user’s feels through
check out your neighbors, which displays all users who are writing on
ttbp based on their most recently updated entry, and a link to their
public html blog if they’ve opted to publish their posts.

please note! entries written on ttbp should be considered sensitive,
private information, even if a particular user is publishing entries in
a world-viewable way! please be respectful about having access to other
people’s feels, and do not copy/repeat any information without getting
their explicit permission. tilde.club operates on a high level of mutual
trust, and ttbp is designed to give individuals control over their
content.

privacy

when you start your ttbp, you have the option of publishing or not
publishing your blog.

if you opt to not publish, your entires will never be accessible from
outside of the tilde.club network; other tilde.club users will still be
able to read your entries through the ttbp interface, or by directly
accessing your ~/.ttbp/entries directory.

if you want to further protect your entries, you can chmod 700 your
entries directory.

if you opt to publish, the program creates a directory ~/.ttbp/www where
it stores all html files it generates, and symlinks this from your
~/public_html with your chosen blog directory. your blog will also be
listed on the main ttbp page[5].

you can also opt to publish to gopher, and the program will
automatically generate a gophermap of your feels.

you can set publishing status on individual entries, or bury individual
feels; see “data management” below for details.

data management

the manage your feels menu provides several tools for organizing your
feels. these are all actions you can perform manually from the command
line, but doing them from within the program can help keep your files
properly linked up.

-   read over feels–a list of all your entries, which you can open and
    read like any other feel
-   modify feels publishing–this lets you toggle privacy on individual
    posts. entries marked (nopub) will not get written to html or
    gopher, and toggling them from this menu will immediately publish or
    unpublish that entry (if you’re not publishing your posts at all,
    these settings won’t matter, since your feels will never show up
    outside of tilde.club)
-   backup your feels–makes a .tar.gz of all your entries, saving one
    copy to ~/.ttbp/backups/ with the current date, and a second copy to
    your home directory for safekeeping.
-   import a feels backup–unpacks a backup file into your current feels
    list. this tool checks the ~/.ttbp/backups directory for archives,
    and expects a file created by the above backup utility. if it
    detects any file collisions, it will preserve your current live copy
    and leave the backup verison in a temp directory, and notify you
    that this happened. also, any entries that were previously marked as
    (nopub) will retain their nopub status.
-   bury some feels–hides individual feels from viewing; entries are
    moved to ~/.ttbp/buried (and marked with a unique timestamp to
    prevent file collision) with permissions set to 600, meaning no one
    except you will be able to open that file. these entries are also
    hidden from your own view from read over feels, and you’ll have to
    open the files from the command line if you want to see them. this
    is intended to be a permament action, so you’ll be asked to type the
    entry date once to load the feel, then shown a preview of that feel,
    and then type the date again to confirm burying.
-   delete feels by day–permanently removes individual entries,
    including deleting published html/gopher files if needed. this
    action is not recoverable, unless you have a backup to restore;
    you’ll be asked to type the entry date once to load the feel, then
    shown a preview of that feel, and then type the date again to
    confirm deletion.
-   purge all feels–permanently removes all feels, including deleting
    all published html/gopher files if needed. this action is not
    recoverable, unless you have a backup to restore. you’ll be asked to
    type a one-time-use purge code to confirm this action.
-   wipe feels account–permanently removes all data associated with
    feels, including deleting any published hmtl/gopher files and
    removing your ~/.ttbp directory. any backups that you have in
    ~/.ttbp/backups will also be deleted with this action (which is why
    the backup function makes a second copy for safekeeping in your home
    directory). you will no longer show up in any lists as a user.

settings

the settings menu lets you change specific options for handling your
feels and using the interface.

-   editor–set your text editor
-   gopher–opt in or out of automatically posting to gopher
-   post as nopub–set whether posts default to being published or not
    published (if you’re not publishing your feels, this doesn’t matter)
-   publish dir–set the directory under you public_html where feels will
    be published (if you’re not publishing your feels, this defaults to
    None)
-   publishing–opt in or out of automatically publishing entries to a
    world-readable html page
-   rainbows–opt in or out of having multicolored menu text

changing your page layout

you can modify how your blog looks by editing the stylesheet or header
and footer files. the program sets you up with basic default. if you
break your page somehow, you can force the program to regenerate your
configuration by deleting your ~/.ttbp directory entirely. you might
want to back up your ~/.ttbp/entries directory before you do this.

-   to modify your stylesheet, edit your ~/.ttbp/config/style.css
-   to modify the page header, edit your ~/.ttbp/config/header.txt
    -   there’s a place marked off in the default header where you can
        safely put custom HTML elements!
-   to modify the page footer, edit your ~/.ttbp/config/footer.txt

general tips/troubleshooting

-   if the date looks like it’s ahead or behind, it’s because you
    haven’t set your local timezone yet. here are some timezone setting
    instructions[6]
-   the feels burying tool will effectively clear your post for the day;
    you can use this feature to start a fresh entry on a particular day
    by burying the current day’s feels and then editing a new file

future features

these are a few ideas being kicked around, or under active development:

-   stylesheet/theme selector
-   better entry display within ttbp (currently just offloads to less)
-   buried feels browser

other ideas are listed on github as upcoming features[7] or feature
requests[8]!

[1] https://github.com/tildeclub/ttbp

[2] http://tilde.club/wiki/code-of-conduct.html

[3] https://tilde.club/wiki/code-of-conduct.html#contact-info

[4] https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

[5] https://tilde.club/wiki/ttbp.html

[6] http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-set-tz-environment-variable/

[7]
https://github.com/modgethanc/ttbp/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22upcoming+features%22

[8]
https://github.com/modgethanc/ttbp/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22feature+request%22