So, we'll roll with this for now and add features as they become necessary. I know I'm probably forgetting about a million edge cases, but I want to keep it simple. That's really all there is to it - dead simple PHP-based templating, and Markdown-formatted plain text content. I was not keen on adding dependencies but I found Parsedown which offers Markdown parsing by including a single PHP file.

I wanted to use plain text files, but some formatting is nice - Markdown was the obvious solution for this, since it offers quite a lot of options in terms of text formatting, without sacrificing the readability of the plain text itself. Having to install or configure it is often unnecessary because it is usually already installed, configured, and running. I like using (vanilla) PHP simply because it is nearly ubiquitous. Many people dislike PHP, and while it has its warts, I like it. On the other hand, installing WordPress or one of the other popular PHP-based CMSes for this use case is like hammering in a nail with a sledgehammer. I don't want to have to install Ruby, or Python, or Composer, or whatever else on a server to run a blog. Many 'flat file' Content Management Systems exist already, as well as 'static site generators', but none of these that I looked at were simple enough for my liking. I've wanted for a long time to create a simple way of blogging that eschews basically all bells and whistles.

Php flat file database