# htwtxt – hosted twtxt server

## Rationale

[*twtxt*](https://github.com/buckket/twtxt) is a protocol and client for
decentralized microblogging. Users are expected to provide their feeds as plain
text files with URLs accessible over the Internet. *htwtxt* is a web server to
host and grow such text files for users without trivial access to their own web
space.

## Set up and run

### Set up Go development environment

With htwtxt written in Go, the setup instructions below expect a Go development
environment – with a somewhat current [go tool](https://golang.org/cmd/go/)
installed, and a `$GOPATH` set. If your system does not have such an
environment, here's some hints on what could possibly work on your system to set
it up:

    wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.5.3.linux-amd64.tar.gz
    sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.5.3.linux-amd64.tar.gz
    export GOPATH=~/go
    export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin

(You might want to add the last two lines to your `.bashrc` or whatever usually
initializes your environment variables. And you might want to replace the
package pulled by wget by whatever is the newest stable release of Go
available.)

### Clone, build, run

With htwtxt written in Go, the following instructions expect a Go development
environment with [the go tool](https://golang.org/cmd/go/) installed, and the 
`$GOPATH` set:

    git clone https://github.com/plomlompom/htwtxt $GOPATH/src/htwtxt
    go get htwtxt
    mkdir ~/htwtxt
    $GOPATH/bin/htwtxt

This will build and start the server, which will store login and feed data below
`~/htwtxt`. An alternate directory may be specified with the `--dir` flag.

## Tweaking

### Configuring port number and TLS

By default, htwtxt serves unencrypted HTTP over port 8000. But the executable
accepts the flag `--port` to provide an alternate port number, and the flags
`--cert` and `--key` to provide paths to an SSL certificate and key file to run
htwtxt as an HTTPS server.

You might encounter the following issue when trying to set a low port number
(such as the HTTP standard 80, or the HTTPS standard 443):

    ListenAndServe: listen tcp :80: bind: permission denied

This is [a common privilege problem](http://stackoverflow.com/q/413807) and
[might be solved](http://stackoverflow.com/a/414258) bis this:

    sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' $GOPATH/bin/htwtxt

### Templates

By default, HTML templates are read out of the directory
`$GOPATH/src/htwtxt/templates`. An alternate path can be given with the flag
`--templates` (the alternate directory should, however, contain template files
of the same names as the default ones).

## Copyright, license

htwtxt (c) 2016 Christian Heller a.k.a. plomlompom

License: Affero GPL version 3, see `./LICENSE`