Contents | Installation BlogMax extends the power of {@Emacs} to ease the maintenance of a weblog, a frequently updated web site containing links and commentary. The name BlogMax is a combination of Blog and {@Emacs} with a curtsy in the general direction of NewsMax. If you don't use Emacs, but you do a blog, it might be worth your while to learn Emacs just so you can use BlogMax. And yes, I sometimes have other illusions of grandeur. BlogMax is loosely patterned after {@Dave Winer}'s {@Manila}. My weblog, {@End the War on Freedom}, started life as a Manila site at {@EditThisPage.com}. Many thanks to Dave and company for creating Manila and making it available to the world via EditThisPage.com and other sites. I have tested BlogMax in Emacs 20.3.1 on Windoze, a couple of Emacs versions on a couple of Linux installations, and XEmacs 21.1 on RedHat 7.1 (VMWare rocks!). If you fix problems with it or add neat new features, send them on over and I'll consider adding them (in my copious spare time). BlogMax turns stylized HTML stored in text files into complete HTML. The following conversions are provided:

Templates are wrapped around the text. These usually provide the basic starting and ending HTML tags (<html><head><title></title></head><body></body></html>), and the basic look of your site. Your text files usually fill in the body. See the Templates page for more details.
Blank lines are turned into paragraph tags (<p>).
A number of macros are provided to make typing easier or do useful computations. One macro, \{@shortcut} provides for pasting in of shortcuts that are remembered in a file. For example, I typed "\{@manila}" to create this {@Manila} link. Shortcuts are usually used to give a short name to a link, but they can be used to abbreviate any text you want. Macros are expanded recursively, so a shortcut can include a macro or another shortcut. See the Macros page for more details.
It's easy to create a page for each day and link them together via a calendar. You can publish the last N day's pages on your site's index page.
There is a Weblog mode, based on HTML mode, that is automatically enabled when you open a text file in your weblog's directory or one of its subdirectories. Saving a text page with C-x C-s automatically generates its HTML. There are other keys in Weblog mode to simplify other operations, for example C-x C-i creates an index page, an RSS file, and optionally regenerates all of this month's pages (to update their calendars to include the new day). See the Weblog mode page for more details.
I haven't yet made email or web page addresses automagically turn into links to themselves. Manila does this, but I don't use it often enough to spend the effort. If you really want it, do it, and I'll likely include your code.

Contents | Installation