/net/dev Engineering Blog & Web CMS (blog.netdev.be)

Personal cloud engineering blog, essays, and browser-based GitHub CMS authored and maintained by Jerome CG Paquay (@jpaquay). Built with Jekyll 5.x, hosted on Firebase Hosting (netdev-firebase), and backed by Google Identity Services (OAuth 2.0) + direct GitHub API publishing.

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🏗️ System Architecture

flowchart TD
    User(["Public Readers"]) -->|HTTPS + CSP/SRI| FirebaseHosting["Firebase Hosting CDN (blog.netdev.be)"]
    Admin(["Blog Author (@jpaquay)"]) -->|Google OAuth 2.0 Identity| AdminGUI["Post Editor CMS GUI (/admin/)"]
    AdminGUI -->|Commit Markdown & Frontmatter| GitHubRepo[("GitHub Repository (_posts/)")]
    GitHubRepo -->|Push to master| GHActions["GitHub Actions CI/CD Workflow"]
    GHActions -->|Build Jekyll _site & Deploy| FirebaseHosting

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For a full engineering, security, and hygiene audit, see docs/ARCHITECTURE_REVIEW.md and SECURITY.md.

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✨ Key Features & Structure

• Static Site Generator: Built on Jekyll 5.x with responsive layouts, RSS/Atom feeds (public/rss.xml, public/blog/rss.xml, public/feed.xml), and WebP media optimization.
• Hosting Platform: Automated build & global CDN delivery on Firebase Hosting (Project: netdev-firebase).
• Interactive Post Editor (/admin):
  • Rich-text Markdown editing with EasyMDE and live split-pane preview.
  • Google Identity Services (GIS) / Firebase Auth login restricted to authorized admins.
  • Direct GitHub REST API integration to fetch, edit, create, and commit Markdown files directly into _posts/.
• Security & Performance:
  • Content Security Policy (CSP) enforcement and font preconnecting.
  • Subresource Integrity (SRI) for external CDN assets verified by automated Jest tests (__tests__/).
  • Staticman form origin validation.

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📂 Directory Structure

├── _posts/                 # Blog post Markdown files (YYYY-MM-DD-title.md)
├── admin/                  # Web-based Post Editor CMS GUI
│   └── index.html          # Main admin editor layout
├── assets/
│   ├── js/admin.js         # GitHub API & Auth logic for /admin
│   ├── js/firebase-config.js # Firebase SDK & Google Auth helper
│   └── css/admin.css       # Post editor styling
├── docs/
│   └── ARCHITECTURE_REVIEW.md # Architecture, security & hygiene audit
├── _includes/              # Jekyll partials (head, header, footer)
├── _layouts/               # Page layouts (default, post, page)
├── .github/workflows/      # GitHub Actions CI/CD deployment pipeline
├── firebase.json           # Firebase Hosting routing & caching rules
└── _config.yml             # Main site configuration

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🚀 Local Development

1. Requirements

• Ruby (v3.0+)
• Bundler (gem install bundler)
• Node.js (v20+) for running Jest security & frontend tests

2. Run Locally

# Install Ruby dependencies
bundle install

# Serve local Jekyll preview (http://localhost:4000)
bundle exec jekyll serve --future

# Run Jest unit tests
npm test

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✍️ Admin Post Editor (/admin)

To edit or create posts via the web interface:

1. Navigate to /admin on your deployed site or local server.
2. Sign in with your authorized Google Admin account.
3. Enter your GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT with repo scope).
4. Create or edit posts — commits are pushed directly to _posts/ in the GitHub repository, triggering an automatic site rebuild and deployment.

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions, bug reports, and improvements are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

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👏 Credits & Author

Authored, architected, and maintained by Jerome CG Paquay (@jpaquay) — https://github.com/jpaquay. Underlying Jekyll theme template originally derived from Beautiful Jekyll by Dean Attali (MIT).

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📜 License

All original articles, essays, diagrams, and custom CMS code are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0) — Copyright © 2026 Jerome CG Paquay (@jpaquay). See LICENSE for full details.