Email Blog Platform Setup Guide

Your email blog platform is now ready to use! Here's how to get started:

To publish a blog post, simply send an email to your Val Town email address:

• Subject: Becomes the post title
• Body: Becomes the post content (HTML preferred, plain text will be converted)
• From: Becomes the author information

Example email:

To: your-email-val@val.town
Subject: My First Blog Post
Body: <h2>Hello World!</h2><p>This is my first post published via email!</p>

• Main Blog: Visit your backend HTTP val URL
• Individual Posts: /post/[slug] (auto-generated from title)
• RSS Feed: /rss
• API: /api/posts for JSON data

✅ Core Features

• Email-to-publish functionality
• HTML and plain text support
• Automatic slug generation
• SQLite database storage
• RSS 2.0 feed
• Responsive web interface
• SEO-friendly URLs
• Social media meta tags

✅ Technical Features

• Static HTML generation (no client-side JavaScript)
• Hono backend API
• TailwindCSS styling
• Error handling and logging
• Fast loading and SEO optimized

The platform includes foundation code for:

• Set WEBSUB_HUB_URL environment variable
• Endpoint: /websub for subscription management
• Automatically notifies subscribers of new posts

• Set BASE_URL environment variable to your domain
• For production use: Generate RSA keys for HTTP signatures
  1. Visit /generate-keys.ts to generate keys
  2. Set ACTIVITYPUB_PUBLIC_KEY and ACTIVITYPUB_PRIVATE_KEY environment variables
  3. Restart your val
• Actor endpoint: /actor
• Inbox endpoint: /inbox
• Full federation support with followers, likes, and shares

• Set ATPROTO_HANDLE and ATPROTO_PASSWORD environment variables
• Automatically cross-posts to Bluesky when publishing

Optional configuration:

# Base URL for your blog (required for custom domains and ActivityPub)
BASE_URL=https://your-domain.com

# WebSub Hub URL (e.g., https://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/)
WEBSUB_HUB_URL=your-hub-url

# AT Protocol (Bluesky) credentials
ATPROTO_HANDLE=your-handle.bsky.social
ATPROTO_PASSWORD=your-app-password

# ActivityPub HTTP Signatures (recommended for production)
ACTIVITYPUB_PUBLIC_KEY=-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----...
ACTIVITYPUB_PRIVATE_KEY=-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----...

To generate ActivityPub keys:

1. Visit /generate-keys.ts in your browser
2. Copy the generated keys to your environment variables
3. Restart your val for changes to take effect

• Edit CSS in the getCustomCSS() function in /backend/index.ts
• Uses TailwindCSS classes throughout
• Modify HTML generation functions for layout changes

• Update blog title and description in HTML generation functions
• Change favicon in HTML templates
• Modify footer text in generateBlogHTML() and generatePostHTML()

• Posts are stored in SQLite table blog_posts_v1
• To modify schema, create new table name (e.g., blog_posts_v2)

Use the /test-publish.ts val to create sample posts for testing.

• Check Val Town logs for email processing
• Use /health endpoint for status checks
• Monitor /api/posts for data integrity

Email → email.ts (Email Trigger)
         ↓
    Database (SQLite)
         ↓
    backend/index.ts (HTTP API + HTML Generation)
         ↓
    Static HTML (TailwindCSS)

1. Set up email forwarding to your Val Town email address
2. Configure environment variables for federation features
3. Customize styling and branding to match your preferences
4. Test email publishing with different content types
5. Share your RSS feed for syndication

• Check Val Town logs for debugging
• Use the /health endpoint to verify system status
• Test individual components using the API endpoints

Your email blog platform is ready to use! Send your first email to start publishing.