LnBlog

As promised, version 0.5.2 is now available. You can get it from the download page.

As I mentioned in the last post, new features include support for tags and an interface for configuring which plugins are loaded and in what order. You will have to log in to the administration pages and run an update on each blog for this.

In addition, I've added a bunch of options to various plugins. For instance, the title text for each sidebar section is now configurable and the title will be suppressed completely if you set it to the empty string. I also fixed up the "smooth" theme to the point where people might actually consider using it. It's a fixed-width layout with rounded corners that uses the same color scheme as the default theme. There were also a few other changes, including a bug fix for comment deletion. You can check the change log for details.

As usual, report any bugs, feature requests, or other questions by e-mailing me or leaving a comment. Merry X-mas!

If you're exceptionally alert, you might have noticed that LnBlog has acquired a new feature: tags. Yes, you can now categorize your posts by topic. I've even added a sidebar plugin to allow readers to pull up all posts with a given tag. You can also view them as a single page, kind of like a sub-blog.

For anyone not familiar with the term "tag," tags are one of the hot things in "social software." They're basically just free-form categories. Rather than have some pre-defined list or hierarchy of categories, you just pick your category on the fly. If it's never been used before and is never used again, that's not a problem. If several categories seem appropriate, that's no problem either - just tag your item with all of them. It's a great way to communicate associations that might not fit any strict organizational model, but which could still be interesting to others.

However, that's not the reason I chose to add tags to LnBlog. The reason is that it was simply easy to implement. I figured it would be nice to have some sort of categorization system, but I didn't feel like writing an interface to add new categories. So I decided to just implement tags instead and do everything on the fly.

Working with tags in LnBlog is quite simple. When you create or edit an entry, there will be a text box to enter tags. You can enter anything you like in this box. If you want to tag the entry with multiple terms, just separate them with a comma. (Note: This can be changed with the TAG_SEPARATOR configuration constant.) So, for example, putting in "Linux,KDE,FreeDesktop.org" would tag an entry as being related to Linux, to KDE, and to FreeDesktop.org. When you search for any one of those tags, that post will show up. In addition, the blog itself will keep track of any tags you use and expose that list of tags for use by plugins. That's how the sidebar topics plugin works.

I'll probably have the next version with this feature up some time before Christmas. But first, I want to add another feature: a plugin loading configuration page. Basically, this will allow you to configure which plugins are loaded and set certain plugins to load first without having to mess around with moving or renaming the files. Currently, the interface for it isn't too pretty, but it's better than nothing. I'll polish it up in a future release.

I've just uploaded version 0.5.1 of LnBlog. You can get it from the download page. This release is mostly bug fixes, bug includes quite a few user-visible changes as well. See the change log for the details. Please note that this release adds a wrapper script, so you will have to log in to the admin pages and upgrade your blogs to the current version.

The first thing you'll notice is a change to the sidebar. I changed the login link to not blend in and look like a heading quite so much. I also changed the administration section of the sidebar that shows up after you log in so that it's now on top.

The second, and biggest, feature of this release is the addition of a basic plugin configuration page (which is why blogs need to be upgraded). Like most preferences in LnBlog, you can configure plugins globally (from the LnBlog admin pages) or for a particular blog. The configuration interface is still in the early stages, i.e. not very pretty, but it will allow you to set options for various plugins. These options will be stored in a plugins.ini file in either the blog root or the LnBlog userdata folder. Please note that all loaded plugins are displayed, but not all of them have configurable options. For the ones that don't, you'll just see a name, version, and short description.

Third, I modified some of the plugins to actually give them configurable options. For instance, the loginlink plugin can switch between displaying a link to the login page and displaying an actual login form, while the metadata plugin now lets you set keywords for a meta tag. There are a few other plugins with configurable options, but you get the idea.

Lastly, I've simplified the initial setup. This obviously won't help current users, but new users should like it. The file writing setup page now tries to autodetect the FTP root, so all you have to enter is a username and password. I've also removed most of the text, which, after looking closer at it, was kind of confusing. Since the file writing setup now has sensible error messages, I figured it was no longer needed. I think LnBlog can now claim to beat the WordPress 5 minute setup.

That's pretty much it for this version. As usual, if you have any questions, comments, or problems, please feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment on this post.