Mia Blogo // Digita Arkivo

I've set up my own blog — primarily to get to know #NixOS better. Surprisingly, it was all quite straightforward.

WriteFreely is a great fit for this: minimalist, quick to set up, and without much bloat. Perfect for just getting started and learning something along the way. The configuration is pleasantly clear. Set a few options, prepare the directory, put a reverse proxy in front — done.

This is what my current NixOS config for it looks like:

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

{
  services.writefreely = {
    enable = true;
    host = "blog.burningboard.org"; 
    settings = {
      server = {
        port = 8080;
        min_log_level = "debug";
      };
      app = {
        host = "https://blog.burningboard.org";
        single_user = true;
        landing = "/read";
        wf_modesty = true;
        federation = true;
        public_stats = true;
        theme = "write";
      };
    };
    stateDir = "/opt/writefreely";
  };

  # Fix for ActivityPub key generation: federation requires openssl
  systemd.services.writefreely.path = [ pkgs.openssl ];

  # Automatically create the data directory with correct permissions
  systemd.tmpfiles.rules = [
    "d /opt/writefreely 0700 writefreely writefreely -"
  ];

  services.caddy.virtualHosts."blog.burningboard.org".extraConfig = ''
    reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:8080 {
      header_up Host {host}
      header_up X-Real-IP {remote_host}
      header_up X-Forwarded-For {remote_host}
      header_up X-Forwarded-Proto {scheme}
    }
  '';
}

That's essentially it. NixOS makes it really easy to configure such services cleanly and keep them reproducible.