⚡️ Aajonus.net - Static Markdown Website With Instant Full Text-Search

A brutally minimal, fully self-hosted publishing engine for text archives.

Drop .md / .txt files into a folder and you instantly get:

Offline-first full-text search (runs in the browser, cached locally)
A clean, fast browsing UI
Shareable URLs + Highlighted matches
No database, No cloud, No trackers, No CDNs

If you want something that feels like a private “Wikipedia + Spotlight search” for your own library… this is it.

Why this exists

Most “knowledge base” stacks are heavy: databases, build steps, Node pipelines, third-party search, hosted analytics, and a pile of dependencies.

This repo is the opposite:

✅ File-based (your content is just files)
✅ Privacy-native (everything stays on your server + the user’s device)
✅ Minimal surface area (Apache + PHP + vanilla JS)
✅ Fast UX (Web Worker search + IndexedDB cache)
✅ Works offline after first load (great for local networks / air-gapped setups)

Features

🔍 Search that feels instant (and stays private)

Loads your library via /code/loadsearch.php
Caches it in IndexedDB for 24h
Runs queries in a Web Worker so typing stays smooth
Shows:
- title matches
- exact text matches + context windows
- partial text matches (multi-word queries)
Click a result → opens the page with highlighted hits + auto-scroll

🗂️ Categories without a CMS

Folders become categories (and subcategories)
Category bar with filtering (no reload)

🧱 Zero-bloat rendering

Markdown is rendered server-side (Parsedown + ParsedownExtra)
No frameworks, no build step, no external assets

🧭 SEO + sharing baked in

Canonical URLs
sitemap.xml auto-generated
Clean slugs based on filenames

🧩 Small but powerful extras

“Find on Page” overlay (findonpage.js) with next/prev match navigation
Image click-to-preview
Optional HTTP/2 + Brotli
Optional PHP-FPM setup for higher throughput

Quick start (the “it’s live in 3 minutes” path)

1) Install Apache + PHP

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2 php libapache2-mod-php -y
sudo systemctl enable --now apache2

2) Deploy the repo

Put this repo into:

/var/www/html

Your content lives in:

texts/

3) Edit `config.php`

Set your base URL + titles:

$baseUrl = 'https://yourdomain.com/';
$logoTitle = "YourSite";
$siteTitle = "Your Site Title";
$siteDescription = "Short description...";

4) Open the site

Visit your server IP or domain in a browser.

That’s it.

Production setup (recommended)

Enable `.htaccess` (pretty URLs, sitemap, HTTPS redirects, caching, etc.)

Edit:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Find:

<Directory /var/www/>

Set:

AllowOverride All

Enable modules + reload:

sudo a2enmod rewrite headers expires
sudo systemctl reload apache2

HTTPS (optional)

Enable HTTPS.

Let’s Encrypt (public internet)

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache -y
sudo certbot --apache -d yourdomain.com -d www.yourdomain.com
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Folder layout

/var/www/html/
├── index.php           # Main application file
├── config.php          # Site configuration
├── style.css           # Stylesheet
├── .htaccess          # Apache rewrite rules
├── code/
│   ├── Parsedown.php       # Markdown parser
│   ├── ParsedownExtra.php  # Extended Markdown features
│   ├── index.js            # Main search & UI logic
│   ├── localsearch.js      # Web Worker for search indexing
│   ├── findonpage.js       # Find-in-page functionality
│   ├── findonpage.css      # Find-in-page styles
│   ├── loadsearch.php      # Search index generator
│   └── sitemap.php         # XML sitemap generator
├── logos/
│   ├── favicon.ico
│   ├── apple-touch-icon.png
│   └── large-logo.jpg
├── imgs/              # Image assets
├── docs/              # Documents (PDFs, etc)
├── texts/             # Your Markdown content folder
│   ├── Q&A/
│   ├── Newsletters/
│   ├── Books/
│   └── ...
└── manifest.json

Content rules (simple + predictable)

Supported file types

.md (Markdown)
.txt (plain text)

URLs / slugs

Slugs are generated from filenames:

transliterated to ASCII
punctuation removed
spaces → -
lowercased

Example:

"My Article (Final).md" → /my-article-final

If categoryInLinks = true, links include the category:

/books/my-article-final

Built-in Markdown extras

Audio / video embeds

In your .md file:

<audio controls preload="none" src="https://example.com/file.mp3"></audio>
<video controls playsinline preload="none" src="https://example.com/file.mp4"></video>

Obsidian-style image syntax

Supported:

![image.jpg](/imgs/image.jpg "image.jpg")
<img src="/imgs/image.jpg" alt="image.jpg" width="600">

Also normal Markdown images work.

Permissions (recommended)

Typical safe defaults:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html

# Directories: 755, Files: 644
sudo find /var/www/html -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/html -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Optional: Performance mode (PHP-FPM + HTTP/2)

If you’re serving a big library or high traffic, this boosts concurrency.

sudo apt install php8.3-fpm php8.3-xml php8.3-mbstring -y
sudo systemctl enable --now php8.3-fpm

sudo a2dismod php8.3
sudo a2enmod proxy_fcgi
sudo a2enconf php8.3-fpm

sudo a2dismod mpm_prefork
sudo a2enmod mpm_event
sudo a2enmod http2

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Increase PHP-FPM capacity:

sudo nano /etc/php/8.3/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
# pm.max_children = 25
sudo systemctl restart php8.3-fpm

Enable Brotli:

sudo a2enmod brotli
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Optional: Server safety checklist

Limit journal growth:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/journald.conf
# SystemMaxUse=200M
sudo systemctl restart systemd-journald

Fail2ban:

sudo apt install fail2ban -y
sudo systemctl enable --now fail2ban

Apache fingerprint reduction:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/conf-available/security.conf
# ServerSignature Off
# ServerTokens Prod
sudo systemctl restart apache2

SEO checklist

Set your domain in robots.txt
Set name + short_name in manifest.json
Confirm sitemap.xml is reachable
Confirm canonical URLs match your real domain ($baseUrl)

Troubleshooting

“My .htaccess does nothing”

You probably need:

AllowOverride All in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl reload apache2

Search stuck on “Loading…”

Check that /code/loadsearch.php is reachable and not blocked by permissions.

URLs not resolving

Make sure .htaccess is enabled and Apache can read the repo directory.

Philosophy

This project is intentionally:

boring (infrastructure you don’t have to babysit)
portable (copy files, done)
private (no third parties at runtime)
fast (client-side search + worker + caching)
minimal (the code is the feature)

License

MIT License. Free to use, modify, and distribute.

Credits

Parsedown / ParsedownExtra for Markdown rendering (included locally)

If you build something cool with it

Fork it, remix it, strip it down even further — this repo is meant to be a base layer, not a platform.