LnBlog

Well, it's finally here: the first beta release of LnBlog 0.7.0. You can download it here if you're feeling adventurous. Note that this version requires that you run an upgrade on each of your blogs in order for it to work correctly, so I strongly recommend that you make backup copies of all your blog directories as well as you LnBlog directory.  Also note that you'll need to register your blogs before you can do this.  It's not hard - just type the path in the box and hit the button, just like running an upgrade.  This is just so that the system knows about them. New blogs are registered when they are created.

This release includes massive code cleanup and a number of new features. On the cleanup side, if you look in the LnBlog/pages directory, you'll notice that the article handling pages are gone. That's because they've been folded into the blog entry pages. This is also the reason that you need to upgrade your blog wrappers: if you don't, articles simply won't work. I've also moved a lot of the logic out of the back-end classes and into the page files, where it belongs. The classes were simply getting too smart. While this was fine for normal operation, and made for really small pages, it got me into serious trouble when I started adding support for the Blogger API, because the classes all assumed they were interacting with a client browser.

But enough of that. You probably want to know about the new features. Well, here's an incomplete list for you, in no particular order:

• Blog tracking. The system now tracks what blogs you create and keeps a list of them. So now, instead of typing in the blog path on the administration page, you can just select it from a drop-down list. Note that if you are upgrading from an old installation, you will have to type the same old path in the "register blog" box on the admin page to get it in the list. Or you can just add the blogs to the BlogList line (comma-separated, no spaces) in your LnBlog/userdata/system.ini file.
• Partial support for group-based security. Basically, it is now possible to have more than one administrator. More meaningful group security will come later. There is no graphical interface for this yet, but you can set users in groups by adding their name to the appropriate comma-delimited list in your LnBlog/userdata/group.ini file.
• Another path for plugins and themes. You can now create LnBlog/userdata/themes and LnBlog/userdata/plugins directories for your non-standard themes and plugins. This just makes it a little easier to upgrade, as you don't have to individually sort out and copy any extra stuff you've installed.
• Support for the Blogger 1.0 API. Use your LnBlog/blogger.php file as the URL for the requests. One thing to note abou the API is that the blogger.getTemplate and blogger.setTemplate methods are not implemented. This is because they don't really apply to the way LnBlog works.
• Support for post editor plugins. That's right, now that the pre-releases of Opera 9 have support for edit mode, I've finally added the ability to use a JavaScript rich text editor. There is no such editor included in the standard release (as the editor would take up more space than the rest of LnBlog), but you can download plugins for TinyMCE and FCKEditor from the new plugins page. Of course, you can only enable one such plugin at a time, but that shouldn't be surprising.

That's about it for now. If you have any problems or find any bugs, please report them to me by e-mail or by leaving a comment. I'm thinking that I'll finish off the Blogger API support, fix any more bugs I find, and call that the final release. There are a number of other things to add, but I'd like to stick a little more to the "release early and often" philosophy.