Link Robins Blog — Ghost-style blog with a built-in newsletter

Karl

Link Robins Blog — Ghost-style blog with a built-in newsletter

A standalone blog extension for Flarum. Posts and categories live in their own tables, comments are real Flarum discussions, and there's a built-in newsletter that broadcasts over your existing SMTP.

If you've ever wanted a "Ghost on top of Flarum" — separate blog reading experience, but moderation and comments stay inside Flarum — this is that.

Run it as /blog or homepage:

What it does

Reader layout

/blog — hero, featured post, grid of recent posts, pagination
/article/{date}-{slug} — centered reading column, cover image with optional credit, body, comments, "Read more" recommendations
/category/{slug} — same layout filtered to one category
Theme-aware: picks up your forum's primary color

Member-only posts

Mark a post members and guests see the excerpt + a login-wall card. Search engines see the excerpt. Optionally gate per-group rather than "all members."

Comments are real Flarum discussions

This is the part that took the most thinking. Every blog post gets a normal Flarum discussion behind the scenes. The comments below the article are posts in that discussion. So:

Edit, delete, flag, hide, restore, mentions, likes, notifications, search — all of Flarum's moderation works out of the box
Permissions, throttling, BBCode/Markdown — whatever you've already configured applies
The discussion is hidden from /all and other listings, but fully reachable by direct link and by the API
The first post is an auto-generated "bookmark card" linking back to the article

There is no shadow comment system. If you can moderate forum discussions, you can moderate blog comments.

Newsletter (built in, not a third-party hand-off)

Star button at the top of the blog sidebar — one-click subscribe for logged-in users, mobile-friendly icon
"Send newsletter" button on the post editor — broadcasts via Flarum's existing SMTP settings
HTML and plain-text email templates with cover image, title, excerpt, CTA, footer
Per-recipient List-Unsubscribe header so Gmail/Apple Mail show their built-in unsubscribe button
Token-based public unsubscribe page that works without login
Admin "Subscribers" tab with live count and CSV export
broadcast_sent_at guard prevents accidental double-sends; explicit "Re-send" requires confirmation

Admin

Custom HTML widget for arbitrary sidebar content
Configurable hero header per blog (text, forum logo, or background image with overlay)

Honest caveats

On the newsletter: the code sends mail correctly. Whether those mails arrive in inboxes vs spam depends on your sending domain. If you don't have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up on your domain, Gmail in particular will spam-folder your broadcasts. That's not something this extension can fix — it's a domain-config thing. Mail-tester.com gives a free score.

On the queue: Flarum's default queue driver is sync, which runs the broadcast inline in the admin's HTTP request. Fine for small lists. If you have more than ₅₀ subscribers, switch to database or redis queue or your browser will time out before the send finishes.

On comments as discussions: this is a deliberate design choice, not a bug. Some folks expect a separate comment system. If you'd rather have isolated comments that don't appear anywhere in Flarum's discussion model, this extension isn't for you.

Install

composer require linkrobins/blog
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

Enable from the admin extensions panel.

License

MIT.

Source

GitHub linkrobins/blog
Packagist https://packagist.org/packages/linkrobins/blog

Feedback, issues, and PRs welcome.

Screenshots:

Karl

Forgot to mention that this is where it all started: #38839

Mirzaagha

I looked. It's great. But when using #33038. You would choose a tag. When you click on the topics used in that tag, it would take you directly to the blog. It would also hide that tag in the forum. I used it as a news section, which was convenient. For example, I'm using the avocado theme now. I've shown the news tag there as a showcase. When you click on the ones that stand out there, it goes to the discussion.

Karl

Mirzaagha to understand what you mean, you would prefer the tags to be completely removed from the standard discussion threads layout / all discussions as a default? I can explore this, sure.
The current implementation is made to allow admins decide by using the Flarum tags itself to exclude from all discussions if they want.
Or if you want a completely separate implementation for blog, I can explore that option as well.

Edit, I have initiated a complete rebuild of the extension. This is hitting more of a CMS territory, but maybe that's what Flarum needs. I'll eventually incorporate the following: more layouts, slug control, newsletter.

Karl

The next update will be a big one.

I have completely rewritten everything. It's basically a CMS at this rate:

Members Only:

Mobile:

Mirzaagha

I want to use this extension as a kind of news section for users. In the previous blog extension, you would select a tag. That tag was not visible in the forum.

If a user clicked on a link to a discussion in a news tag, it would automatically redirect them to the blog page for that news. Not to the discussion.

Also, that blog extension had a sidebar. I hid it with custom CSS. I was just using the full screen as a news section. I think it would be great if you could add more customization options.

Silvestrus

I use blog on daily basis. It would be nice that new blog has all the existing features and to build on that with some new ideas perhaps?

Karl

Mirzaagha Silvestrus this blog extension is turning into its own CMS. There will no longer be any shared content from the Flarum side at all. My version has its own tables and such.
It will have its own categories, comments, posts, widgets, etc. It is completely standalone but built within Flarum for its structure, user base etc.
I am and will not hijack someone else's work.

ernestdefoe

Karl it would be nice if there was a way to promote a forum discussion to the “CMS” kinda like how you can do with Invision Community.

Silvestrus

Karl I am and will not hijack someone else's work.

I didn't suggest that at all. Implementing features that are useful is not hijacking. And the other thing that hasn't been mentioned yet. At least, I think... Will there be some kind of migration from the old blog extension? I have hundreds of blog articles on my blog at the moment.

Karl

Silvestrus sorry I misunderstood. A lot of chaos happening around me at once right now. I'm so sorry!
I don't plan on doing a migration... But I'll see if I can implement it once I get all the quirks ironed out.

Karl

Building my own comment system proved to be very very annoying.
I have reverted back to rely on Flarum for comments, and honestly, a lot of sites do this anyway now.

It's 12 and I have to be up at 4 for my day job. 😅

MaxDob

Karl When is the update planned? I can't wait to test it!

Karl

MaxDob I cannot make any promises yet. I want to ensure that it's stable and meets all security checks before I ship it. Can be as early as the end of this week and as late as mid week next week (hopefully).

Karl

Mirzaagha the current way I have it set right now, admin publishes a blog -> create a discussion with the cover photo and link to the article. This discussion is invisible in the forum. Only way to access it is via the article itself or a direct link/ search. To accomplish this and keep things simple, blog post discussions bypass the tag requirements and post without tags. This is further extended to hide all discussions without a tag in /all

I have copied Flarum's side nav that transitions to a top nav in mobile to ensure uniformity and intuitive travel along the site. Therefore there will not be a full screen option with the way I am moving ahead.

Karl

Silvestrus I'll see what tables are configured for the other blog extension and create a migration plan for this. This is a good idea!

Karl

ernestdefoe I'll see about implementing this. Are you meaning the entire forum post can instantly post as a blog?

ernestdefoe

Karl What it does is take the first post that is converted to an article and makes it the article.

Karl

Changelog

[1.0.1] — 2026-05-15

Added

Newsletter system. Logged-in users can subscribe via a star button at the top of the blog sidebar (filled = subscribed, outline = not). State syncs across desktop and mobile sidebar instances.
Newsletter broadcast. Admin "Send newsletter" button on the post editor emails every current subscriber via Flarum's configured SMTP. Includes HTML + plain-text templates with cover image, title, excerpt, CTA button, and unsubscribe footer.
Per-recipient List-Unsubscribe header so Gmail and Apple Mail surface their built-in unsubscribe button in the inbox.
Token-based public unsubscribe page at /linkrobins-blog/unsubscribe/{token} — works from any device without login. Same response whether the token matches or not, to avoid leaking which addresses are subscribed.
Admin "Subscribers" tab with live count and downloadable CSV export (RFC-4180 quoted, chunked at 500 rows for large lists).
Broadcast double-send guard. A broadcast_sent_at column tracks whether a post has been mailed; the endpoint requires an explicit force=1 flag to re-broadcast.
"Read more" related posts at the end of every article — up to 3 posts from the same category, falling back to most recent overall.

Changed

Comments are now real Flarum discussions. Each blog post gets one normal discussion behind the scenes, with the first post being an auto-generated bookmark card linking back to the article. All Flarum moderation (edit, delete, flag, hide, mentions, likes, search) applies.
Blog-comment discussions are hidden from /all and search listings but remain fully accessible via direct link and API.
About widget renamed to "Custom HTML widget" in admin labels (setting keys unchanged for backward compatibility).
Comments section now sits before "Read more" recommendations on article pages.

Fixed

now() helper resolution. Controllers in LinkRobins\Blog\Api\Controller now use Carbon::now() explicitly. The bare now() helper doesn't fall through to the global namespace from inside a namespaced controller and threw "function not found" on subscribe.
XSS via cover-image credit. Credit text was previously rendered via innerHTML; now plain-text only.
CSS injection via cover URL. Inline background-image: url(...) now uses encodeURI instead of JSON.stringify.
CSS injection via category color and icon. Server-side validators: hex pattern ^#[0-9a-fA-F]{3,8}$ for colors, lowercase alphanumeric + hyphen + space for icons.
Open redirect in safeNavigate. Now refuses non-internal paths and blocks scheme-relative URLs like //evil.com.
Visibility info-leak. The visibility query-param filter is now restricted to admins, so members-only post existence isn't leaked to guests.
broadcastSentAt exposure is admin-only on the resource — non-admins can't see whether a post has been broadcast.
Exception messages no longer leak to clients. Controllers log full errors server-side but return generic messages in 500 responses.
Per-recipient broadcast errors are caught. One bad email address no longer aborts the batch.

Security

unsubscribe_token is not mass-assignable. Removed from $fillable; only the model's creating hook sets it.
From address is set explicitly on each newsletter email to avoid relying on SMTP-server defaults.
Unsubscribes are logged for audit trail.

Migrations

2026_05_15_000001_create_blog_subscribers_table — newsletter subscribers list with unique user_id and FK cascade-delete.
2026_05_15_000002_add_broadcast_sent_at_to_blog_posts — broadcast send-time guard.
2026_05_15_000003_add_unsubscribe_token_to_subscribers — per-subscriber token, with backfill for existing rows.

Run php flarum migrate after upgrading.

Known limitations

The default sync queue driver runs broadcasts inline in the HTTP request. For lists over ₅₀ subscribers, configure Flarum to use a database or redis queue driver to avoid browser timeouts.
Deliverability depends on the sending domain's SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records. The extension cannot affect inbox placement on its own.