…I’ll be coming home next year…
Yep, time is passing by, and another year has gone; so long after our first though about “rewriting” spb and now they’re starting to implement their very own widget system :) time passes for them, too; a happy new year guys, for both you and your creature.
Now, let’s go forth, and talk about next year (the verses above were Foo Fighter’s).
What is this new year going to mean for our beloved FlatPress ?
I’m already working on the next release. I’m cleaning the code as much as it is needed to upload it to SVN; this will mean you will be able to track down my progresses almost daily (at least, every time I commit something new to the server), using the SVN client.
But before I’m ready to do this I want to separate my code from the third parties’; this mean when getting code from SVN the first time you won’t find Smarty and SmartyValidate, which are needed for FlatPress to display its content. You’ll have to get them yourself from http://smarty.php.net and http://www.phpinside … code/SmartyValidate/, or just from an older FP package :) this way I won’t have to sync my SVN to theirs.
While doing this, yesterday I think I’ve finally manage to make FP really super-portable (at least on *NIX servers; on IIS the admin panel wouldn’t be supposed to work, AFAIK), this meant the setup could become even more simple, and it now finally consists of only two effective steps.
No more need to insert a blog root and the blog url we ask you for is no more considered a critical information: BLOG_BASEURL is now a constant which is created by flatpress itself (and so, we hope hassle-free).
While I was then removing these steps then I decided to add a few more features. :P
In case of a reinstallation you will be asked if you really want to overwrite your configuration files, and what of these files you want to overwritten, being able to skip this step as well.
Also, you will be able to skip the admin creation if you already have a working admin and don’t want to change his password.
Other changes involve the rename of the theme config files from theme_conf.php to theme.conf.php to be consistent to the other config file naming conventions. Of course the change is not only formal but also substantial. The theme config file will let you choose an alternate css for the admin panel.
You probably know that your theme provides an admin.tpl file which lets you design your admin panel html layout; what you probably don’t know is that, despite themes tend to put the admin panel right in the usual theme layout (with the widget sidebar, too) this isn’t needed. This was an original decision we liked in the beginning, but now we see how sometimes this is restrictive. Imagine you don’t have any sidebar: you’ll have a bigger work area for your entry text editor, letting you write with more comfort.
Moreover in this config file (which is actually a php file) you will be able to override the default admin.css used to display the tabs in the admin panel, which is FULL of horrible hacks to make it work with IE; if you don’t mind about IE you can completely override it to completely change how panel/tabs are displayed.
This, and much more.
Happy new year, FlatPress.
…catch me if I get too high…
Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 20:39:27
Cavolo, una figata sta cosa delle immagini!!! La voglioooooooo
Saturday, December 30, 2006 - 20:40:07
PS: mettendo il commento è comparso questo
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Notice: SmartyValidate: [is_valid] transform function ’stripslashes’ was not found. in /home/mhd-01/www.nowhereland.it/htdocs/flatpress/fp-includes/smarty/SmartyValidate.class.php on line 476
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Sunday, December 31, 2006 - 20:17:42
greetings:
as you know, i use Simple PHP Blog, and i am really interested in porting my blog - http://www.ReallyGoodFriend.com - to FlatPress.
today, i downloaded the latest FlatPress from Source Forge (flatpress.0.612.1-FINAL.tar.bz2) and installed it here - http://www.buildingtheweb.com/flatpress/ - with quickly and easily with no problems. cute little thing there to make people read the instructions.
however, i could find no way to do anything with making templates or themes. and your comments above about Smarty and SmartyValidate honestly aren’t clear for people who don’t really know what you’re talking about.
okay, so Smarty is a ‘template engine’. how and where should one put it? and then what, if anything is needed to get it to work with FlatPress? as for SmartyValidate, well, what should one do with it in terms of implementing it with FlatPress?
these questions may seem to you like they have obvious answers, but to those of us who don’t know, and have no documentation to look at, it’s a big mystery and it would be great if you could explain a bit better.
it’s my understanding that creating themes is simpler with FlatPress than with Simple PHP Blog and that’s very exciting news.
i’ve got a bunch of style sheets already, in terms of colours. i also have headers and background images to share. i just have to find out how to actually make themes so that i can make a real contribution to the FlatPress community - something I am raring and to do.
and once i understand stuff, i’ll be more than happy to help with documentation, including tutorials.
i would also like to find out about porting blogs from SPHPB to FP. it would be great if someone could explain in detail about that. for example: how do i keep my categories?
also, i want to port my blog from a 2-column layout to a 3-column layout. how does one make a 3-column theme for FlatPress. i have a mockup here - http://www.reallygoodfriend.com/images/3_column_blog_layout.jpg
looking forward to hearing from you.
Tari Akpodiete
http://www.ReallyGoodFriend.com
Monday, January 1, 2007 - 11:01:24
Hi, Tari, Happy new year :)
At the moment you don’t have any need for downloading Smarty and SmartyValidate, as they come already packaged with all of the FP releases you can download from sourceforge.
In the post above I was referring to the development version you will be able to get as soon as I move on SVN.
SVN (SubVersioN) is a Server/Client system allowing a developer to manage his sources with more comfort; with SVN one can keep constantly updated on a web-accessible server all of his code, so that it can be accessed from anywhere using the SVN client. A public access is available for non-dev users, too, so that they can keep in touch with what the dev is doing, and helping finding out bugs.
As these Smarty and SmartyValidate aren’t a project of mine, they’re of course developed in a parallel way, with which, of course, I can’t be always synchronized; so the solution is keeping on my “SVN repository” only the files that strictly belong to the project.
This will mean that if you want to download the sources from SVN, FlatPress just WON’T WORK because Smarty is a core component.
The solution will be for you to download both Smarty and SmartyValidate from their sites and copying them to the right directories. FlatPress itslef will tell you what they are.
The other solution is just downloading a woking package of FlatPress, downloading from SVN, overwrite the old files of the package with the fresh ones :)
At the moment I agree with you that we’re lacking of documentation. I hate the lack of documentation, too, I understand.
A tutorial about themes, believe me, “is in the pipeline”, but… well, I don’t have much time at the moment :/
The best solution for you is having a look at the already available themes; flatmaas2 is a bit commented, even though it’s not the best in terms of cleanliness. I’m counting on releasing a new, more commented theme as soon as these changes I listed above will get more stable.
I can’t give you a date, but I think the whole thing will take at from one to two months. I’m very busy with my exams :/
Still, if you have a problem, just ask here, or, even better, on the Mailing List and I will be happy to answer :)
(sorry for typos or the inconsistence of this answer, I don’t have time to read)
bye
Monday, January 1, 2007 - 11:02:09
Andrea, thanx for pointing out, I forgot to sync some files here with my local copy, I’ll get this fixed soon. Happy new year
Tuesday, January 2, 2007 - 10:09:19
ehi man, you have seen this?
http://brianreavis.com/lightbox2.02/index.html
Tuesday, January 2, 2007 - 15:18:22
I don’t see any reason for a switch to that version; and btw I’m going to deprecate lightbox itself to use jquery+thickbox
http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/
bye