A collection of open source apps for the small web.

Pure Commons apps

To learn more about each of the apps that make up the Pure Commons project, click on a banner below.

Pure Blog is a simple PHP based blogging platform, designed from the ground up for personal blogs and the small web. It has everything you need to manage a personal blog, with none of the noise of other services. Some of Pure Blog's features include:

  • Flat-file content using Markdown and front matter.
  • A clean, distraction-free admin dashboard for writing and organising posts/pages.
  • Draft previews so you can check your work before publishing.
  • Optional tags and tag archives for grouping related posts.
  • Automatic pagination when your post list grows long.
  • An RSS feed so readers can follow along however they like.
  • Built-in search that helps readers find exactly what they’re looking for.
  • A settings page that allows you to customise and configure your blog.
Pure Blog screen shot Visit Pure Blog

Pure Comments is a simple, self-hosted commenting system that you can add to your personal blog. If you don't want to self-host Pure Comments, I'm also working on a hosted offering at a small cost. Pure Comments features include:

  • An easy to use admin dashboard for managing comments.
  • Ability to reply to comments as author from admin dashboard.
  • Anti-spam mechanism within the comment form.
  • Customisable design so comments can look like the rest of your site's design.
  • Configurable email notifications via Amazon SES.
Pure Comments screen shot Visit Pure Comments

Pure CSS, AKA Simple.css is the impetus for all of this. I started Simple.css back in 2022, as I wanted a simple CSS framework to that I could drop into semantic HTML and have it look good. Since then, Simple.css has gained nearly 5,000 stars on GitHub and has somewhat of a cult following. Simple.css includes:

  • A good looking sans-serif local font stack.
  • Typographic best practices.
  • Automagic flipping to dark mode.
  • Fully responsive.
  • Sensible defaults that format standard HTML elements.
  • Super lightweight.
Visit Pure CSS