Tower Talk

Description

A small forum-style website for Moontower Computer Club members to post about projects and comment/collaborate.

Installing

1. Download latest release. Will have the following inside:
   • Folder with HTML/JS/CSS called towertalk/
   • Binary: towertalk.bin
2. Install towertalk.bin to ~/cgi-bin/
3. Install the towertalk/ folder to ~/public
4. Create a password for using your towertalk
   • Create the folder: mkdir -p ~/.config/towertalk
   • Run openssl passwd -6
   • This will give you a salt and hashed password in the form: $6$<salt>$<hash>
   • Save these under ~/.config/towertalk/password.salt and ~/.config/towertalk/password.hash
     • Make sure to add a \n at the end!
     • Recommended:
       • echo "$6$<generated salt>" > ~/.config/towertalk/password.salt
       • echo "<generated hash>" > ~/.config/towertalk/password.hash

How to Use

Posting

To post a new project/entry:

• Visit your main towertalk page via https://moontowercomputer.club/~<your username>/towertalk
• Go to where it says "New Post"
• Enter a title, Markdown body, and your password (See "Installing")
• Click submit

Under the hood, this will call the towertalk.bin file in your cgi-bin directory which will:

• Verify your identity by comparing your password with the salt and hash
• Create an Id for the post
• Create a folder ~/public/towertalk/posts/<id>
• Create a file called TITLE.txt in that folder with the title your gave your post
• Create a file called BODY.md in that folder with the markdown body you gave your post
• Create a file called index.html to render everything

When you then visit https://moontowercomputer.club/~<your username>/towertalk, you should see a post there, and if you click it, you'll be taken to https://moontowercomputer.club/~<your username>/towertalk/posts/<id> which will let any user view the post.

Commenting

Once a post exists and a user can visit it, that user can contribute to the conversation via comments.

To add a comment:

• Visit the post you want to comment on: https://moontowercomputer.club/~<poster's username>/towertalk/posts/<id>
• Go to where it says "Leave Comment"
• Enter a Markdown body, your username, and your password
• Click submit

Under the hood, this will call the towertalk.bin file in the commenter's cgi-bin directory which will then:

• Verify their identity
• Create a folder ~/public/towertalk/comments/<poster's username>/<id>
• Create a file called COMMENT.<number>.md with the content of the comment in it
  • <number> is simply there to give a unique file name in case there are multiple files. It's just a counter

Comments can be viewed under the original post on its page and all the posts can be viewed under your main towertalk page.