How To Blog

Disclaimer. The project is intended as a learning curve of web development with Python from a QA perspective. It doesn't aim to be a hands-on application. This web application allows users to view blog posts, read about the author, and send messages through a contact form.

Features

• Responsive design for all devices (Bootstrap)
• Dynamic blog posts loaded from an external API (Npoint) - DEPRECATED
• Content is stored and fetched from the local database
• Individual post pages with detailed content
• About page with author information
• Contact form with email notification functionality

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd how_to_blog
   

2. Create a virtual environment and activate it:

   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   

3. Install the required dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

4. Set up environment variables by creating a .env file in the project root with the following variables:

   MY_EMAIL=your-email@example.com
   MY_PASSWORD=your-email-password
   SMTP_SERVER=your-smtp-server (e.g., smtp.gmail.com)
   SECRET_KEY=your-flask-secret-key
   

Usage

1. Run the application:

   python main.py
   

2. Open your web browser and navigate to:

   http://127.0.0.1:5000/
   

Project Structure

how_to_blog/
├── main.py                 # Main application file
├── README.md               # Project documentation
├── static/                 # Static assets
│   ├── assets/             # Images and favicon
│   ├── css/                # CSS stylesheets
│   └── js/                 # JavaScript files
└── templates/              # HTML templates
    ├── about.html          # About page template
    ├── contact.html        # Contact page template
    ├── footer.html         # Footer template
    ├── header.html         # Header template
    ├── index.html          # Home page template
    └── post.html           # Individual post template

Dependencies

• Flask: Web framework
• Requests: HTTP library for API calls
• python-dotenv: Environment variable management
• smtplib: Email functionality

API Integration - DEPRECATED

The blog posts are fetched from an external API endpoint. The application uses the following endpoint:

https://api.npoint.io/405401fd224c5d58a066

Database Integration

A simple local SQL DB (SQLite) is created to store all posts

License

This project is not licensed.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome but not required at all😜