println is a blogging / publishing software written in Scala with the Lift Web Framework. It tries to fulfill the need for an un-obustrive approach of writing, publishing and managing ones blog posts with it's overlay-editor-window.
It is heavily inspired by Nesta CMS a Ruby based CMS Software and also uses parts of its default layout (since i like it for its simplicity).
All my websites (Bettag Systems UG and uberblogs) currently run println.
There also is a Demo site. Screencast will follow.
Currently, println caches by default every response for an URL for 60 seconds.
This only applies for non-authenticated requests, authenticated users will have uncached Responses.Currently it is text-only. I will implement media-management as soon as possible. For now i suggest storing your images elsewhere (Flickr, Picasa) as they offer better upload-possibilities from mobile devices anyway.
Another caveat is, that JavaScript is not rendered in the Live-Preview (but properly on the resulting published page). Meaning that if you enter into the Live-Editor, it won't show in the Live-Preview, but will be perfectly normal on the website.
The main layout is in src/main/webapp/template-hidden/default.html and has all the widgets that are currently implemented. Here is the overview:
<span class="lift:Helpers.bitpit?id=7019"></span><span class="lift:Helpers.twitter?user=fbettag"></span><span class="lift:Helpers.analytics?ua="></span><span class="lift:Tags.cloud"></span>© <span class="lift:Helpers.years?since=2010"></span><div class="lift:embed?what=_social"></div><div class="lift:Helpers.disqus?name=my.new.blog"></div>If you want to implement your own, feel free to look at src/main/scala/code/snippets/Helpers.scala for how to do so.
PostgreSQL (or any other JDBC-Driver that Liftweb supports)
Scala
MongoDB (optional for Statistics)
You can download this project in either zip or tar formats.
You can also clone the project with Git by running:
$ git clone git://github.com/fbettag/println mysite.com
After installing PostgreSQL, run the following in your shell:
$ createuser -Upostgres printlndemo $ createdb -Upostgres --owner println printlndemo
Sometimes it can be hard for newcomers to see how git helps you manage this, but here is how i recommend doing it.
cd mysite.com/ git branch -t mysite.com # create your own branch git checkout mysite.com # check it out git branch -D master # delete the local master edit templates in src/main/webapp # edit your templates git commit -a -m 'My Layout changes.' # save your changes
Now whenever we publish an update, you simply do:
git rebase origin/master
The best thing would be, to push your new branch to a remote repository for backup. To find out more about stuff like that check gitready.com and sometimes my blog.
Configure your Project and Database: (use default.props as example)
src/main/resources/props/default.props (Development) src/main/resources/props/pilot.default.props (Preview - copy from dev) src/main/resources/props/production.default.props (Production - copy from dev)
If you want your production. and pilot.default.props in your repository, make sure you uncomment the line in .gitingore!
SMTP Setup is straight forward. Either you have your SMTP Host on localhost, or you have a remote-host which lets you relay. In Postfix this can be easily done with my_networks.
Whenever you're done making changes, make sure you commit! Otherwise rebase won't work and you will encounter other problems like backing up.
Run in development-mode:
mvn jetty:run
Deploy for production:
mvn package
Download David Pollak's jetty_instance.tgz and do the following:
tar -jxf jetty_instance.tgz cd jetty echo 9090 > base_port (or whatever your Port should be) echo 64M > ram_size (change to appropriate size!)
Copy your packaged .war-file to jetty/webapps/root.war and run:
./start_prod.sh (and ./shutdown_prod.sh)
Point your nginx to the port of the jetty and follow the on-screen instructions.
MongoDB is solely used for statistical analysis like Browser-, Referer- or Target-URL-tracking. This is not fully tested yet, but it has interesting results and more flexibility as opposed to other commercial products.
If you want to try it without MongoDB, feel free to do so. Just make sure you unset/comment "mo.host" in your .props-files.
Instead of writing stupid SQL-Queries to get the default pagetitle, the pagetitle is defined in the properties files (default.props, production.default.props). IMHO this is a performance-saver as well as practiable.. How often do you change your main-site title?
Some of the JavaScript- and Request-Routing-Stuff is very hackish, but it also shows the capabilities Lift has to offer or how you can reuse or abuse them.
to everybody in the Lift Community and on Liftweb Google Groups.
Franz Bettag (franz@bett.ag)