BM can do a lot, but it can't do everything. With some simple modifications to your webserver's configuration, you can get even more out of BM.
Starting with v3.0.0, BM will generate a styled 404 page. After a successful
build, you can find it at /404.html. BM uses it automatically sometimes*, but
it can't possibly detect real 404s.
To configure nginx to use the 404 page requires only one line.
error_page 404 = /404.html
Every Linux distro seems to come with a different default nginx confiruation.
For Gentoo, I had already added a server {} block in the http {} block
in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf in order to make nginx work for me, so within that
server {} block I added the above line. Debian and Ubuntu normally have a
server {} block in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default in their basic default
configuration.
In apache, the following line is probably the one you'll want to add somewhere, likely in a VirtualHost block. I haven't tested this.
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
* BM uses the 404 when MAKE_SHORT_POSTS is unset. Instead of /p/<id>.html
being the post, it returns 404 the 404 page. This is due to a limitation in the
current build process.
Starting with v3.0.0, BM can optionally copy the source post files (the files in
the posts/ subdirectory that end with .bm), into the build/ subdirectory
so that they can get served up by your webserver. BM will only do this if
CP_SRC_FILES_TO_BUILD is set.
Unfortunately, webservers by default may not detect these .bm files are just
plain text, and thus won't display them in the browser, and the browser will
just offer to download them. If you'd like to have them displayed in the browser
for your users, you need to tell your webserver that files ending in .bm are
plain text.
Gentoo makes this easy by default in nginx. I just needed to add the following
line to /etc/nginx/mime.types inside the types {} block.
text/plain bm;
If your webserver is apache, this should also be possible. Many Linux distros
have a /etc/mime.types file, and apparently apache will read it. You should be
able to add the following line to this file. I haven't tested this.
text/plain bm