New Blogging Software Incoming

Posted on | by Tim Slagle

I keep losing posts when Bludit times out without any warning or chance to save. It is really discouraging to spend 30 minutes writing and then have it all disappear with when you click ‘Save’. Autosave is supposed to happen every minute but the autosave file was getting deleted even when the save failed! I disabled the deletion of the file by removing the deletion code in editPage in functions.php:

    // Check if the autosave/preview page exists for this new page and delete it
    if (isset($args['uuid'])) {
        $autosaveKey = $pages->getByUUID('autosave-'.$args['uuid']);
        if ($autosaveKey) {
            // Will this keep autosaves from being deleted even if save fails?
            // Log::set('Function editPage()'.LOG_SEP.'Autosave/Preview deleted for '.$autosaveKey, LOG_TYPE_INFO);
            // deletePage($autosaveKey);
        }
    }

This prevents the autosave file from getting removed but unfortunately autosave isn’t working while I’m editing. There must be some kind of connection timeout which just prevents all communication between the post editor and the server.

I searched the Bludit support forums and found multiple reports of similar problems over the years:

It looks like a problem that has been around for a while but I haven’t seen any fixes, just browser work-arounds and suggestions to copy the text before trying to save. There was also a “Heartbeat” plugin that is no longer available.

This has happened on about a third of my posts and it has prompted me to look for new blogging software. I’m currently trying out Grav. I like Bludit better so far but I can’t stand to lose so much work!

More Bludit Alternatives

Still looking for something free and database-less, with an admin console and WYSIWYG editor option. I guess I’m flexible on using Markdown as long as the storage format isn’t too proprietary – at this point it is still awkward to use. Here are some other packages to check out, courtesy of https://alternativeto.net/software/bludit/ and https://www.flatphile.co/ :

Or, you know, I could just break down and use WordPress. I researched, installed, and started using Bludit in less time than I’ve spent looking for a WordPress blog theme, which is what got me to simple and flat-file in the first place.