How to Install WriteFreely on FreeBSD Latest

WriteFreely is a self-hosted blogging platform that lets you easily set up a blog and start writing.

This tutorial will walk you through the steps to install WriteFreely on FreeBSD Latest.

Prerequisites

Before starting with WriteFreely installation, it is recommended to have the following prerequisites:

  • A FreeBSD Latest server.
  • A non-root user with sudo privileges.

Step 1: Install Dependencies

To install WriteFreely, you need to install the following dependencies:

  • Go language version 1.12 or higher
  • Git version 2 or higher

You can install these dependencies by running the following commands:

sudo pkg install go
sudo pkg install git

Step 2: Clone WriteFreely

Next, you need to clone the WriteFreely repository to your server using the following command:

git clone https://github.com/writeas/writefreely.git

This will download the WriteFreely source code to your server.

Step 3: Build WriteFreely

After you have cloned the repository, navigate to the writefreely directory using the following command:

cd writefreely

Then, build the binary by running the following command:

go build

This will create a binary called "writefreely" in the current directory.

Step 4: Configure WriteFreely

Before running WriteFreely, you need to configure the application.

Copy the sample configuration file to a new file called config.ini by running the following command:

cp config.sample.ini config.ini

Then, edit the config.ini file using your favorite text editor.

Set the following properties:

  • SiteTitle – The title of your site.
  • RunMode – Set it to "prod" for production use.
  • Database – The path to the database file.
  • DataDir – The path to the directory where files will be stored.

Step 5: Run WriteFreely

After configuring WriteFreely, you can start the application by running the following command:

./writefreely

WriteFreely will now be running. Visit http://localhost:8080 to see your new blog.

Step 6: Setup System Service

To run WriteFreely as a system service, you need to create a systemd service.

To do this, you first need to create a new file called writefreely.service in /usr/local/etc/systemd/system/ with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=WriteFreely instance

[Service]
ExecStart=/path/to/writefreely
Restart=always
User=non-root-user

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Replace /path/to/writefreely with the path to your WriteFreely binary and non-root-user with your non-root user.

After creating the service file, run the following commands to start the service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl start writefreely
sudo systemctl enable writefreely

Congratulations, you have installed WriteFreely on your FreeBSD Latest server!