The Val Town Blog has undergone a migration from its original hosting on Astro and Cloudflare Pages to being hosted directly on Val Town. This repository contains the code that powers the current blog implementation.

• New Posts: New blog posts are rendered directly from Val Town using markdown files
• Legacy Posts: For older blog posts, we proxy requests to the original blog hosted at Cloudflare Pages
• Homepage: The homepage is dynamically constructed by:
  1. Parsing the RSS feed from the old blog at https://val-town-blog.pages.dev/rss.xml
  2. Injecting new posts hosted on Val Town into the feed
  3. Rendering the combined content with a consistent design

• /index.tsx: Main entry point that handles routing and proxying
• /components/HomePage.tsx: Renders the blog homepage with the list of posts
• /components/BlogPostTemplate.tsx: Template for rendering individual blog posts
• /components/BlogPosts.ts: Manages the list of new blog posts and merging with RSS feed
• /components/MarkdownRenderer.ts: Simple utility to convert markdown to HTML
• /blog-posts/: Directory containing markdown files for new blog posts

The main index.tsx file handles proxying requests to the old blog when necessary. When a user visits a URL that corresponds to an old blog post, the request is forwarded to the original Cloudflare Pages deployment.

To add a new blog post to the Val Town Blog:

1. Create a markdown file in the /blog-posts directory with the post content

   • Example: /blog-posts/my-new-post.md

2. Add the post metadata to the newBlogPosts array in /components/BlogPosts.ts:

   {
     title: "My New Blog Post",
     link: "/blog/my-new-post",
     description: "A brief description of the post",
     pubDate: "Fri, 29 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT",
     author: "Author Name"
   }

3. The post will automatically appear on the homepage and be accessible at the specified link

• The old blog URL is: https://val-town-blog.pages.dev/
• New blog posts are stored as markdown files and rendered on-demand
• The homepage fetches and parses the RSS feed from the old blog
• The system uses React for rendering both the homepage and individual blog posts
• No external dependencies are required for markdown parsing or RSS handling

When modifying the blog system:

1. Update the components in the /components directory
2. Test changes by visiting the homepage and individual blog posts
3. For styling changes, modify the inline CSS in the respective component files
4. To change how posts are fetched or merged, update the fetchBlogPosts function in HomePage.tsx