LnBlog

The releases are coming fast and furious lately. Verion 0.3.2 is now available from the download page. In addition to a number of bug fixes, there has been some cleanup of the configuration process, based on the feedback from the last release.

The file writing setup page now includes a new configuration constant - the document root, which stores your HTTP root directory in the fsconfig.php file. This removes the need to recalculate it all the time and allows you to change it easily if there is any problem doing the calculation. Of course, you already have a working installation, you won't need to worry about this.

I also added a page to test the document root and a page to automatically guess your correct FTP root. They're just pop-ups that are called from the file writing config page and you can copy and paste the results. Nothing fancy, just a little something to help people who are having trouble with these.

And while I'm on the topic, I also added (untested) support for adding a port number to the FTP host. It works by using the standard hostname:port syntax in the FTP host configuration. If anyone has occasion to use it, let me know if it works.

The rest of the changes are just small bug fixes and usability enhancements. If you're really interested, you can read the ChangeLog. If you find any bugs or have any suggestions, please feel free to contact me

I knew there were going to be bugs. Here's version 0.3.1, which fixes a bunch of bugs, most of which involved problems with adding articles. It also adds some accessibility features to the entry/article editing form. I've changed around the code a little, added some accesskeys, and associated emphasis in the text.

That's pretty much it. Have fun!

Well, it looks like trackback at least sort of works. I happen to have a copy of sphpblog lying around on my workstation (I looked at it before starting LnBlog and decided for various reasons - both technical and political - that I don't like it), and I remembered that that has TrackBack support. So, long story short, I set up a quick blog in sphpblog, made a dumby entry, and successfully sent a trackback ping to it. So it looks like my brain-dead-simple TrackBack implementation works after all.

Unfortunately, sphpblog didn't have quite as muck luck sending a ping to LnBlog. When I tried, I got the same fsockopen() error that I got when I tried a more complicated TrackBack implementation for LnBlog. It's probably related to my system configuration, but I haven't had much time or reason to look into it yet.

Well, I give up - I'm releasing version 0.3.0. I think I've worked all the bugs out of this release, but I guess only time will tell. You can get it here.

If you look back over the past several posts, you'll see there are several new features in this version. I've added real user accounts, a new theme, a mehtod to edit the sitemap that doesn't include changing templates, (largely untested) trackback support, and e-mail notification for comments. I even added documentation on all the new features.

Due to some of the changes, the upgrade procedure is a little different from the usual "upload and overwrite old files." Because of the addition of user accounts, the format of passwd.php has changed, which means that your usual login is no longer going to work. You should delete the passwd.php file in the root of you LnBlog installation and then go to the administration page so that LnBlog will prompt you to create a new login. In addition, you might want to delete or rename you old themes directory, as some of the files will be stale. A change to the templates means that it is no longer necessary to duplicate images and stylesheets between themes. If a theme needs a stylesheet, script, or image that does not exist under the theme directory, then it will use the one from the default theme. Thus you'll want to get rid of any unneeded files in the theme directories.

As usual, I welcome questions and comments. Have fun!

Well, I'm just about ready to release LnBlog 0.3.0. It's just about ready, I think. I did just discover a bug in the new sitemap editor (didn't account for "magic quotes" - God do I ever hate those), but things are looking good aside from that.

I still have a few features to test. I need to test out the mail-on-comment feature, because I'm not running a mail server on my local network. Assuming that PHP is set up correctly, though, there shouldn't be too much that can go wrong. I also need to test the Trackback module. It works when I test it against LnBlog, but all that means is that I've implemented the specification consistently. I need to actually send a trackback ping to another blog (which shouldn't be too difficult) and receive one from another blog, which could prove problematic since nobody reads my site.

I'd also like to figure out why Akregator keeps marking some of my old entries as new. I haven't looked into it too closely, because this seems to happen with a lot of RSS feeds, but I'd kind of like to know what's happening. This may wait for a while, though.

Anyway, I'm done adding new functionality for this release. Between the new user login scheme, trackbacks, and polishing up the theme module, this release should be pretty good. At this rate, by version 0.4.0, I'll have all the features that I care about.

If you're a developer, particularly an open-source or free software developer, then you can probably empathize with the feeling of not knowing when to stop coding and do a release. I'm having that problem with LnBlog 0.3.0. I've already got what could be a pretty nice release, but I've still got ideas of things to add.

For instance, today I started a little Javascript page to edit the site map. It's a fairly small feature - it just writes a text file to one of two places - but it's also important because it means that users will no longer have to manually edit template files manually to get a custom site map. Another feature I've been thinking about for a while is adding a "user info" page, which can display information on a given user ID, such as real name, e-mail, and homepage. This idea came back to me the other day when I was reading on some web usability site (probably Jakob Nielsen's site) that a link on a person's name should go to a page of information about that person, not his or her e-mail address. Again, a small feature, but one which could (arguably) improve usability.

However, there are other features that should probably wait for a while, such as a full-fledged LBCode parser. I was starting to design one the other day, and it occurred to me that it might be better to get the next release out the door before I worry about that.

Anyway, I think those two are probably the last real features I'll add for this release. The theme tweaking is coming along nicely and I think I'll be done soon.