So you want to start a personal blog, but you don't want the bloat of WordPress, the steep learning curve of a full CMS, or a monthly bill for a hosted platform. That's exactly why Scriptlog exists. 

Scriptlog is a lightweight, secure PHP blogging platform built for people who want to own their content, keep things simple, and not fight their tools. This guide walks you through everything from installing it on your server to publishing your very first post. Let's get to it.

Before You Begin: What You'll need  

Make sure your server or local machine has the following ready to go:

  • PHP 7.4 or higher (extensions: pdo, pdo_mysql, json, mbstring, curl) 
  • MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.3+ for the database
  • Apache or Nginx as your web server (Apache needs mod_rewrite enabled)
  • Composer, The PHP dependency manager at getcomposer.org
  • Git, optional but recommended for cloning the repo

Not sure if your server meets these requirements? Don't worry.  The Installer will check everything for you in Step 1.

For installation guide, you can read installation article. After you have successfully installed Scriptlog, you can populate your weblog in admin panel. Log into your admin panel: 
http://your-domain/admin/
Log in with your username and password you set during installation. You will land on the dashboard, your home base for running the weblog. From here you can:
  • Write and publish posts.
  • Manage pages and navigation.
  • Upload media like images, audio, video, and documents.
  • Install themes and plugins.
  • Moderate comments
  • Configure your blog settings.

Write Your First Post 

Clik Posts > Add New from the admin sidebar. You will see the post editor powered by Summernote, a rich WYSIWYG editor that feels a lot like a word processor. image

Here is a quick rundown of the fields you will work with:  

  • Title: the headline of your post.
  • Content: write and format using toolbar (bold, italic, list, links, images).
  • Topic: assign your post to category.
  • Tags: add relevant keywords.
  • Featured Image: set a cover  image for the post.
  • Post Status: save as Draft or publish immediately.
  • Comment Status: allow this post to be comment or not.
  • Post Visibility: manage this post as public, private, and protected.

When you ready hit Publish.

image

Your post goes live at:

http://your-domain/your-post-slug

Customize Your Blog

Change the site name and description. Go to Settings > General.

Set Up Email (Optional but Useful) 

to receive comment notifications or allow password resets by email, configure your SMPT settings under Settings > Mail.

SMTP Host : smtp.youremailprovider.com
SMTP Port : 587
Encryption : TLS
Username : [email protected]
Password : yourpassword


Explore Themes 

Go to Appearance > Themes to browse and activate available options. The default hemes i clean and blog-ready straight out of the box.