Django Blog Plus

Enhanced features for django-blog-lotus, providing additional functionality for professional blogging.

Features

• Call to Action (CTA) Blocks: Create reusable CTA components and assign them to articles
• Article Cover Styling: Customize cover image backgrounds with preset or custom colors
• View Tracking: Track article views for popular/trending widgets
• Webhook API: Create and update articles programmatically via REST API
• Scheduled Publishing: Automatically publish draft articles at scheduled times
• RSS/Atom Feeds: Full syndication support with category feeds
• SEO Enhancements: Sitemaps, reading time, heading optimization
• Premium Templates: Modern, responsive blog templates

Installation

pip install django-blog-plus

Quick Start

1. Add to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    'smart_media',
    'ckeditor',
    'ckeditor_uploader',
    'lotus',  # django-blog-lotus
    'django_blog_plus',
    # ...
]

2. Configure settings (optional):

#############################################################
# Smart Media (required by django-blog-lotus)
#############################################################
from smart_media.settings import *  # noqa: E402,F401,F403

#############################################################
# Lotus (django-blog-lotus)
#############################################################
from lotus.settings import *  # noqa: E402,F401,F403

SITE_ID = 1  # Required by django.contrib.sites (used by lotus)

#############################################################
# Django Blog Plus
#############################################################
DJANGO_BLOG_PLUS = {
    'SITE_NAME': 'My Blog',
    'SITE_DESCRIPTION': 'A blog about interesting things',
    'WEBHOOK_SECRET': 'your-secret-key',
    'ARTICLE_PUBLISHED_WEBHOOK_URL': '',  # Optional Zapier/n8n webhook
    'BASE_TEMPLATE': 'base.html',  # Your project's base template
    'DEFAULT_COVER_BG_COLOR': '#f8f9fa',
}

#############################################################
# CKEditor configuration
#############################################################
CKEDITOR_UPLOAD_PATH = "uploads/"
CKEDITOR_ALLOW_NONIMAGE_FILES = False
CKEDITOR_RESTRICT_BY_DATE = False
CKEDITOR_IMAGE_BACKEND = "ckeditor_uploader.backends.PillowBackend"
CKEDITOR_BROWSE_SHOW_DIRS = True

# Suppress CKEditor deprecation warning (known issue, upgrade to CKEditor 5 planned)
SILENCED_SYSTEM_CHECKS = ['ckeditor.W001']

CKEDITOR_CONFIGS = {
    "lotus": {
        "width": "100%",
        "height": 400,
        "language": "{{ language }}",
        "skin": "moono-lisa",
        "startupOutlineBlocks": True,
        "extraPlugins": "image2",
        "image_previewText": True,
        "removePlugins": "stylesheetparser",
        "allowedContent": True,
        "toolbar": "Default",
        "toolbar_Default": [
            ["Undo", "Redo"],
            ["ShowBlocks"],
            ["Format", "Styles"],
            ["RemoveFormat"],
            "/",
            ["Bold", "Italic", "Underline", "-", "Subscript", "Superscript"],
            ["JustifyLeft", "JustifyCenter", "JustifyRight"],
            ["TextColor"],
            ["Link", "Unlink"],
            ["Image", "-", "NumberedList", "BulletedList", "-", "Table", "-", "CreateDiv", "HorizontalRule"],
            ["Source"],
        ],
    },
}

3. Add URL patterns:

from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    # ...
    # CKEditor for rich text editing in blog
    path('ckeditor/', include('ckeditor_uploader.urls')),
    # Blog
    path('blog/', include('lotus.urls')),
    path('api/blog/', include('django_blog_plus.urls')),
    # ...
]

4. Run migrations:

python manage.py migrate django_blog_plus

5. Add context processor (for blog categories in templates):

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        # ...
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                # ...
                'django_blog_plus.context_processors.blog_categories',
                'django_blog_plus.context_processors.django_blog_plus_config',
            ],
        },
    },
]

Configuration Reference

When the context processor django_blog_plus.context_processors.django_blog_plus_config is enabled, these options are available in templates as django_blog_plus_* context variables: django_blog_plus_site_name, django_blog_plus_site_description, django_blog_plus_base_template, django_blog_plus_primary_color, django_blog_plus_default_cover_bg_color, django_blog_plus_cover_bg_colors, django_blog_plus_language_code. Sensitive options (WEBHOOK_SECRET, ARTICLE_PUBLISHED_WEBHOOK_URL) are not exposed in context.

Webhook API

Create Article

curl -X POST https://yoursite.com/api/blog/webhook/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "title": "My Article",
    "content": "<h2>Hello</h2><p>World</p>",
    "category_slug": "news",
    "status": "published"
  }'

Update Article

curl -X PATCH https://yoursite.com/api/blog/webhook/update/ \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "article_url": "/blog/2024/01/15/my-article/",
    "title": "Updated Title"
  }'

See /api/blog/webhook/info/ for full API documentation.

Template Tags

{% load django_blog_plus %}

{# Reading time #}
{% reading_time article.content %} min read

{# Previous/Next navigation #}
{% get_adjacent_articles article as nav %}
{% if nav.previous %}Previous: {{ nav.previous.title }}{% endif %}

{# Article CTA #}
{% get_article_cta article.id as cta %}
{% if cta %}{{ cta.title }}{% endif %}

{# Popular articles #}
{% get_popular_articles 5 as popular %}

{# Cover background color #}
{{ article|article_cover_bg }}

Management Commands

# Publish scheduled articles (run via cron)
python manage.py publish_scheduled_articles

# Clean up placeholder images
python manage.py remove_blog_placeholder_images --dry-run

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for the full changelog.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or pull request on GitHub.