Announcing Blogsum-1.0

2009-11-14 12:56:56 by jdixon

I'm happy to announce the release of Blogsum-1.0. This release includes a number of bugfixes and a couple enhancements over 0.9:

  • Fixed preview mode
    Preview content is now encoded so markup will always get recreated properly in your browser.
  • Tag Cloud
    Thanks to Jim Razmus who submitted this new feature. Make sure you add the new $max_tags_in_cloud setting to your local Blogsum.pm.
  • Update date when (re-)publishing
    The published timestamp updates when you publish or republish an article.
  • Fix timezones in db
    Fixed a bug where article or comment timestamps were always set to GMT instead of localtime.
  • Fix pagination
    Removed pagination view from all non-default views. That is to say, we shouldn't paginate when viewing by year/month or tag filters.
  • Minor aesthetic improvements
    Lots of whitespace fixes, a redesigned footer and the addition of a meta generator tag for Blogsum.
  • Example httpd.conf for Apache-2.x
    Thanks to Dan Colish for testing Blogsum with Apache-2.x and submitting his configuration example. This has been added to the examples directory as httpd2-blogsum.conf.

I'd like to also thank Johan Huldtgren for submitting Blogsum to the FreeBSD ports tree for inclusion. It has been accepted and will likely bring many new Blogsum users, which will inevitably cause me to struggle even harder against the onslaught of feature requests. ;)

Just kidding, I'm glad to see Blogsum gaining interest in the community. I've also updated the OpenBSD port, if you happen to be using that instead of following svn. Enjoy!

Mad Stylers in Demand

2009-09-20 23:04:53 by jdixon

Blogsum is quickly reaching the point where the focus is on style rather than substance. This is a good thing, of course; all of the core features envisioned for Blogsum are complete. If you've been paying attention at home you might have noticed that the directory layout has been tweaked a bit this weekend. I think these changes will make it much easier to support user modifications and third-party style templates.

The preference for Blogsum styling is to just modify the CSS stylesheet. However, users are also free to modify the images and HTML templates if they so desire. The structure is pretty straightforward:

/blogsum/themes/
               /$blog_theme/
                           /images/*.gif
                           /admin.tmpl
                           /index.tmpl
                           /style.css

The default theme is obviously contained in /blogsum/themes/default/ and shouldn't be modified. Copying the entire contents to a new theme directory is enough to get started. Make sure to set $blog_theme in your Config.pm. The only images currently included are used in the Admin view for managing articles.

P.S. There is now a Blogsum-users mailing list available for general questions and discussion about the project. If you happen to craft a new theme, please let us know!

Updates on Blogsum

2009-08-30 21:07:54 by jdixon

Minor features are still being added to Blogsum. It supports searching by author (effectively treating authors like tags) and the ability to disable comment submissions. There is also readmore support, allowing you to define a portion of an article that should only be seen in full "article view". You simply insert a <!--readmore--> tag where you'd like the "preview mode" to stop.

I'm also adding email notifications for comment submissions. This way you'll know the instant a new comment requires moderation. I should be done with this very soon. The last couple of items on my To-Do list are pagination and cleaning up the template usage. Once these are complete it should be ready for submission to the OpenBSD ports framework.

Update: Email notifications for comment submissions are complete.

Shiny Objects and WTFs

2009-08-13 03:42:54 by jdixon

I've never claimed to be a prolific hacker. I take much longer to complete a simple piece of code than even your typical hobbyist programmer. I'm easily distracted by shiny objects and WTFs.

Nevertheless, I finally gave in and threw together something resembling a blogging app. There are no fancy features yet, and likely never will be. It currently does about 90% of what I want it to do, which is closer to 2% of what the typical blogging/CMS application is capable of. It's my own KISS approach with a healthy peppering of careful input handling and a simple SQLite backend.

If you've been looking for a small blog application, particularly one designed for running in OpenBSD's default httpd(8) chroot, then Blogsum might be good for you. If not, that's ok too. Let the next guy have his World Domination. I just want to blog some.

Introducing Blogsum

2009-08-10 19:16:13 by jdixon

This is an in-development version of blogsum. The goal is a simple, secure blogging application that doesn't come with useless knobs or hurdles.

The anti-wordpress.