Journal

A super simple, self-hosted Journal application that's written in PHP.

Journal was created by Kev Quirk and uses the following packages:

• Simple.css - to make it look pretty
• Parsedown - to add Markdown support

I created this little application for my own use, but figured it might be useful for others. Originally it created a plaintext file and rendered them, but I've since improved the functionality by moving from plaintext files, to an SQLite database.

Here's the features that are currently supported in Journal:

• Markdown within journal entries.
• Tagging support for entries.
• Ability to delete entries.
• Entry pagination.
• An On This Day page that allows you to look back at previous entries from a week, month, and previous years.
• A stats page that shows numbers of entries, as well as entries by mood and tag.
• Full text search.
• An authentication system to keep your Journal private.

Demo

Journal has been deliberately designed to be clean, basic and simple to use. Here is what it looks like:

screenshot

If have also setup a full demo of Journal so you can get an idea of what it looks like and how it works. You can view the demo here.

Hosting requirement

The hosting requirements are extremely simple. All that is needed is PHP support and SQLite, both of which are available with most hosting providers.

Getting started

1. Fork or download the project.
2. Upload the project to your hosting provider.
3. Rename example-config.php to config.php and fill in the details.
4. Enjoy!

Even though Journal requires SQLite, no configuration is needed. If no existing database is detected, then a new one will be automatically created when you publish your first entry.

Securing your data

If you are using a publicly accessible web server, you must ensure the data folder is secured. This will prevent someone browsing to the folder, or downloading the database.

For those running an Apache2 web server, your data folder is already secured with the.htaccess file in the data folder.

If you are using Nginx you will need an entry in the server section of your config file, something like:

location ^~ /data/ {
 deny all;
 return 403;
 }

Then restart NGINX

Caddy has a number of ways to do this -- consult your documentation.

To test your security, add /data/journal.db to the end of your web address in the browser location bar. You should be Denied access and it will NOT download the file.

Setting up the config file

There are 4 simple options to complete in the config file:

1. The title of your Journal.
2. The Journal's description (this will be shown under the title within the site header).
3. Your timezone.
4. Your username & password for authentication.

1 & 2 are pretty straightforward, so I won't go into detail on them. To setup your timezone, find the correct one for your location from this list, then replace Europe/London within the config.

Setting up authentication

This is still very simple, but requires a little more work as you can't just put the password in ths config file in plaintext - that wouldn't be very secure now would it. Instead we use a hash function to obfuscate the password. You can do this in a couple of ways. If you have PHP installed on your local machine, run the following command replacing your-secure-password with whatever you want you password to be:

php -r "echo password_hash('your-secure-password', PASSWORD_DEFAULT) . PHP_EOL;"

This command you output something like this, which is your password hash:

2ドルy10ドル$w17iaaeoqfn96w9jlFK3t.NdltDqVcndArseVoPaWjKrbBe4wngSy

All you need to do then is paste this hash in the config file, replacing your-password-hash. Your Journal should then accept whatever password you set.

Alternatively, if you don't have PHP installed, or you aren't comfortable in the command line, you can use this online tool to generate the hash for you. Just leave the settings as default (BCRYPT & 12), type in your password and git the generate button.

Roadmap

Journal is pretty much feature complete at this point, as it does everything I need it to. I might add additional features in the future, but this project is driven by my needs. If there's a feature you'd like me to add, please submit an issue and I'll consider it.

No warranty

Please note that this was always designed to be a personal project to help me learn PHP. If you decide to self-host a copy of Journal it comes with no warranty whatsoever and I can't be held liable for any issues as a result of using this software.

Thanks

Finally, I'd like to thank Martijn van der Ven for reporting some critical security bug that I was able to fix.