Server-rendered sites

If the blog pages are made on request (Next.js on a server, Remix, Nuxt, PHP, Laravel, Rails, Django, a Cloudflare Worker or Pages Function), read the feed when /blog is visited and keep it a few minutes. There is no build hook and nothing to rebuild: a new article appears within your cache time.

Set it up

1. Add JOOGOOS_FEED_URL and, as a secret, JOOGOOS_FEED_KEY to the server’s environment.
2. Add a route for the blog path and its articles (examples below). Cache the feed for about five minutes; the feed allows 60 reads an hour per key, and answers 304 to If-None-Match with its ETag.
3. Deploy, and open /blog. The owner’s card in Joogoos turns green after the first read with the key: Joogoos remembers when a site last read its feed, and counts a read in the last seven days as connected.

Leave the Build hook box in Joogoos empty.

Never show an empty blog

Keep the last good copy of the feed, and serve it whenever a fresh read fails (Joogoos unreachable, a 401 while a key is being replaced, a 429). A blog that says “no articles” to Google for an hour can lose its articles from search for days. The example below keeps the old copy when a read fails; on Cloudflare, store it with the Cache API under a fixed key for 30 days. Also serve a live sitemap of the articles (/blog/sitemap.xml, from entries) and list it in robots.txt: a sitemap made at build time cannot know an article published since.

Node (Express)

let cache = { at: 0, feed: null, etag: null };
async function feed() {
  if (Date.now() - cache.at < 5 * 60_000 && cache.feed) return cache.feed;
  const res = await fetch(process.env.JOOGOOS_FEED_URL, {
    headers: {
      authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.JOOGOOS_FEED_KEY}`,
      ...(cache.etag ? { 'if-none-match': cache.etag } : {}),
    },
  });
  if (res.status === 200) cache = { at: Date.now(), feed: await res.json(), etag: res.headers.get('etag') };
  else if (res.status === 304) cache.at = Date.now();
  return cache.feed ?? { entries: [], redirects: [], gone: [] };
}

app.get(['/blog', '/blog/*'], async (req, res) => {
  const f = await feed();
  const path = req.path.replace(/\/+$/, '');
  const moved = f.redirects.find((r) => r.from === path);
  if (moved) return res.redirect(301, moved.to);
  if (path === '/blog') return res.send(renderList(f.entries));
  const entry = f.entries.find((e) => e.path === path);
  if (entry) return res.send(renderArticle(entry));
  res.status(f.gone.some((g) => g.path === path) ? 410 : 404).send('Not found');
});

PHP

$feed = apcu_fetch('joogoos_feed');
if ($feed === false) {
  $ctx = stream_context_create(['http' => ['header' => 'Authorization: Bearer ' . getenv('JOOGOOS_FEED_KEY')]]);
  $feed = json_decode(file_get_contents(getenv('JOOGOOS_FEED_URL'), false, $ctx), true);
  apcu_store('joogoos_feed', $feed, 300);
}

Escape every field when you render it, and render entry.body with a Markdown library.