Brigid

A simple blog engine—but not simpler than it should be.

Demo

• My blog: tiendil.org — see it in action with all features.
• Sources of the blog: tiendil-org-content — see how the content is organized.

Or run the project from the root of this repository:

poetry install

./bin/dev-server.sh

Features

• Monolithic design — install and run. No need to look for plugins or themes.
• Extensive tag support for navigating and organizing content.
• Markdown as a source code for posts.
• Multi-language support by design.

Extensive tag support

• Powerful tag filtering for posts. Especially useful if your blog is also your knowledge base.
• Similar post suggestions based on common tags & links (configurable).
• Post collections: for instance, if you want an always-up-to-date list of posts tagged travels and best.
• Post series: for example, if you want a dedicated set of posts marked by a special tag like my-cool-experiments-with-chatgpt.
• Prev/Next post navigation for series of posts.

Markdown as a source

• Every page is a Markdown file.
• Each Markdown file has a TOML frontmatter with metadata.
• In addition to standard Markdown features, Brigid supports custom blocks:
  • Lists of posts in a collection.
  • Contents of a post series.
  • Image / gallery.
  • YouTube video.
  • Spoilers / details.
  • Info blocks (admonitions).
  • Tables.
  • Including content from other files (snippets).

Multi-language support

• Cross-linking between posts/pages in different languages.
• SEO support for multi-language content.
• Configurable translations.
• Configurable per-language site menu.
• Auto-detect language by headers and redirect users to the right entry point, e.g. my-cool-blog.org -> my-cool-blog.org/<language>/
• Auto-marking links to posts that are not translated yet. For example, if you have a post in German and want to link to your English post that currently lacks a German translation (but might have one later).

Other features

• Mobile-friendly.
• SEO-friendly.
• No default cookies.
• Custom headers/footers with JS code.
• Last posts block on the post page.
• Configurable redirects on the content side—no need to inject them in your reverse proxy configs.

How to run

Set environment variables:

BRIGID_ENVIRONMENT="prod"

# Path to your content directory.
# You can find examples here:
# - ./test-content
# - https://github.com/Tiendil/tiendil-org-content/tree/main/content
BRIGID_LIBRARY_DIRECTORY="<path-to-your-content-dir>"

# Optional: Brigid will store files here for your reverse proxy to serve.
BRIGID_API_CACHE_DIRECTORY="<path-to-your-cache-dir>"

# Python list of allowed origins for CORS:
BRIGID_ORIGINS="[\"https://my-site.org\"]"

Install and run the server:

pip install brigid uvicorn

uvicorn brigid.application.application:app \
    --host 0.0.0.0 \
    --port 8000 \
    --workers 4

That’s it! You’ll have a server running on port 8000.

Consider the following for production deployment:

• Process Management: Use a process manager like systemd, supervisord, or Docker to ensure reliable, long-term operation.
• Reverse Proxy: Set up a reverse proxy such as Nginx or Caddy to enhance performance and security.

Design principles

A subjective list of design principles I follow in this project:

• One solid, stable, simple, up-to-date solution. Just install and run.
• Markdown won ⇒ use Markdown as the primary source for posts.
• TOML won ⇒ use TOML for metadata and frontmatter instead of YAML.
• No unnecessary or unused features.
• Designed for non-trivial posts: long, multi-language, with images, tables, code, etc.
• Server-side rendering is good — use it as the primary approach.
• Use minimal JS only when truly required.
• No CSS experiments—only stable, verified solutions.