ActiveLabs blog

The move was longer than expected but it s now done, and my former typo blog has been moved to static Webby website. Here are the elements I used to migrate:

• posts: migrate_content_to_webby.rb
• comments to discuss: export_comments.rb
• using gist to embeded code and syntax color: gist.github.com
• tags system improved from http://aaronqian.com/
• ping from avdgaag

That’s about all you will need to start a blog. Later I will work on some tasks to publish best posts to twitter or rubycorner.

should be available soon on gihub…

I did it! After some days, I can move all the old comments to disqus and then link them to the webby posts. Here is the rake task:

export_comment_to_disqus.rb

Also you need to install the update disqus gem (API ver. 1.1) from my repo or link the lib, it fixes small things need to make the export works:

disqus lib

I use Typo for my blog for some month now and before for other blogs. For its purpose of blogging it is a good tool, and written with Rails :). As Mephisto I think both inherit of the Rails’ fashion. The past week I tried to implement inside Typo a small poll system I have developed in standalone application. I really got surprised by the complexity of Typo, and the lack of interface for extension, then I tried quickly its brother and it was maybe better, but so complex. We are far from the 20’ blog’s demo. These two blogs are made by great people knowing very well Rails then I guess the code is good and can handle every situation, but can’t we do simpler ?

Radiant 0.6.0

Radiant 0.6.0 is going out today. Don’t look at the version number (last stable was 0.5.2), this new version is a big change. I have tried it before but was not happy with the behavior system. Why add another concept to MVC? Why the basic content should be a page?

In this new version the concept of behavior disappears, I let you check on the website what is different. “Instead” there is a great extension system. You have an interface between radiant and extension to declare it (that is IMO a minimum to make a good system) and then you can access the Radiant API to easily extend it, by example, add a new tab in admin interface (try this in Typo ;) ).

I like:

• a clear and simple coding
• a neat admin interface
• a great extension system!

I don’t like:

• the concept of Page, website is not only pages but many kind of contents as files, folders (or node). Even if extensions bring Assets, the top class should be Content instead of Page.
• the single level of snippets and layouts (only to complain about something :p)

Link

• RadiantCMS website

First (and last?) sidebar I’ve made for Typo: a poll system. The code it’s at its early development but works. I started by a plugin, I found almost what I need then I wanted to integrate it to my Typo blog… It was more difficult to integrate this piece of code than to type it. And sadly I discovered that Typo is not really good to be extended, at least since you want more interaction between your sidebar with user than from a static page.

Poll sidebar

The default installation is done with a sqlite database. After a corruption of this database I decided to migrate to mysql … It was not a piece of cake.

For those you want to use mysql u should install typo as following :

Then you will have the installation starting and ending with an error. But you have already a project created.

Execute the db/schema.mysql.sql on your database.

Modify the config/database.yml as you need and relaunch the install. Now the installtion go to the end, set up databse and start mongrel.

That’s all.

I have currently an ubuntu dapper running ruby, rails and gem.

As gem will need to compile some stuff you should do :

$ apt-get install build-essential

Then at first try I had an error :

Building native extensions. This could take a while…
extconf.rb:1:in `require’: no such file to load — mkmf (LoadError)
from extconf.rb:1
ERROR: While executing gem … (RuntimeError)
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

I found my ruby installation was not complete, then you shall install following packages :

$ apt-get install ruby1.8-dev ruby1.8 ri1.8 rdoc1.8 irb1.8 /
libreadline-ruby1.8 libruby1.8

Installation of typo also needs sqlite3 (you will see, by default the installer creates a database and launchs mongrel)

$ apt-get install libsqlite3-0
$ apt-get install libsqlite3-dev
$ apt-get install sqlite3

Install the ruby sqlite debian packages.

$ apt-get install swig
$ apt-get install libsqlite3-ruby

Now it should work fine :)

$ sudo gem install typo —include-dependencies

$ typo install directory

At this step, the typo installer creates a directory with a full version of typo and embedded rails, creates a database and launch the blog behind mongrel.

To configure Apache, you can find in installer directory and example of the config file need to put in apache. For my configuration with Apache 2 I did the two commands :

$ ap2enmod proxy
$ ap2enmod proxy_http

and change the servername and proxy pass instruction :

ProxyPass / http://localhost:4434/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:4434/

Where 4434 is the port configured by typo during installtion. Now just reload apache and you should see your website with a beautiful azure typo.