Tag Archives | scripts

Beautiful Blogging with Textpattern

Dec/09 in Web Development Tutorials

Textpattern is another one of those great blogging scripts that often gets forgotten about with the surge of popularity that WordPress has had over the past few years.  It is a elegant, flexible and easy to use content management system that is both open source and free to use.

textpattern

The requirements are pretty basic to get it up and running, so any Linux-based shared hosting environment should do.  The install is just as simple too, with your basic download, configure, setup database, and upload.

It can handle just about any blogging task you throw it’s way.  From content publishing, multiple contributors, link management and the inclusion of Textile, a simple syntax for nudging plain text into structurally sound and stylistically rich web content, it is not lacking in features.

If you want to give it a test drive, there is both a front end and admin demo up on OpenSourceCMS.com.

It comes ready for themes and plugins too.  Your best resource to pick those up would be the Textpattern Resources web site.  TextGarden.org also has a number of Textpattern themes to use.

All in all, I think Textpattern is a simple, yet effective blogging script that is well worth trying out. 

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Small, Yet Powerful Blogging with Pritlog

Dec/06 in Web Development Tutorials

Pritlog sounds like a knock off cheese log you might be expecting to see from your great aunt Marie this holiday season, however I can confirm, right off the bat, that you are wrong.  Pritlog is an extremely simple (yet powerful) blogging script.

pmwiki-32 Some of the features included are:

  • Archive
  • Comments with users
  • Mail on Comments
  • Reddit
  • Pagination
  • Bbcode by editing html (work around)
  • RSS Feeds
  • List all comments

So it has a lot of the standard bases covered.  It also probably has one of the shortest install documentations I have ever seen.  Another interesting factoid is it does not use or need a MYSQL database and fully works based on flat files.

Have a sold you yet?  Pritlog is totally free and can be downloaded here:

http://hardkap.net/pritlog/pmwiki.php?n=Pritlog.Downloads

Check out the demo, and let me know what you think.  It might be too simple for some – but if you like easy and small, Pritlog is the way to go.

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LifeType is Your Blogging Solution?

Dec/03 in Web Development Tutorials

lifetype-blogging-help A “state of the art blogging solution” is how LifeType describes themselves.  For me, they were filed in the drawer labeled “blogging engines I had never heard of”.  It does a good job at covering all the blogging basics.  

They have ping and trackback, RSS, blogroll, permalinks, and come reading for moblogging too. 

How easy is it to install?  The installation process looks pretty straight forward.  Should be good to go on any Linux-based hosting setup with MySQL database support.

LifeType also has a very interesting history, as described by their about page:

The LifeType project started in February 2003 when its leader, Oscar Renalias, needed a set of dynamic scripts for his personal web page. Even though he did not know about the idea of weblogs back then, the outcome of the first iteration of the project already resembled one. A few weeks later Francesc, another one of the founding members, suggested that developing a blog with support for multiple users and blogs could be a better idea, and so pLog 0.1 was released on the 2nd of September 2003 featuring most of the features that are still part of the core features nowadays: multi-user and multi-blog from the ground up, template engine, localizable and extensible via plugins.

It seems it was also known as pLog for some time, but they had to drop the name due to trademark concern with Amazon.

Here are a few more links you may wish to have handy:

  • LifeType Templates and Styles – The styles for LifeType are fully customizable, so you can fix it up to suit any design need you might have.
  • LifeType Plugins – As with other blogging scripts (like WordPress) LifeType comes with the ability to add a number of different plugins too.

If you want to give it a whirl before you install, you can try out the admin and user interface demo over at OpenSourceCMS.

LifeType’s biggest feature is that they support multiple blogs and users in a single installation.  You can download LifeType via their web site, and if you have had any experience with it, I would love to hear your feedback.  Is it really the state of the art blogging solution it claims to be?

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Habari = Next Generation Blogging Script?

Dec/02 in Web Development Tutorials

Looking at more blogging script alternatives, I ran across one that promises to be, “next-generation blogging.”.  I don’t even know what that means, but I do have to admit Habari has a bright future in t-shirt slogans if nothing else.

habari-blog-script

To check out the demo, click here.  So what does set Habari apart from the crowd?

Habari is being written with a firm understanding of the current state of blogging. Most other blogging packages have been around long enough that their responses to things like comment spam and Digg site overloads are bolted on after the fact; whereas Habari is being written from the beginning to take these things — and more — into account.

Here is some video of it in action.  You can check out the official site for a few more screenshots too.

Download Habari, and give it a shot.  If you run into any issues, you might double check with your web host that all the requirements are met.  The only bad side is they have some pretty oddball must-haves in there.

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Database-less Blogging with Flatpress

Nov/28 in Web Development Tutorials

FlatPress Blogging

Looking for another blogging script alternative?  The neat thing about FlatPress is that they say it needs no database management system to work.  Now, how the heck do they do that?  You don’t need MySQL because FlatPress stores all of its content on text files.  Some of the other features included are:

  • Standard-compliant (XHTML valid)
  • Plugin support
  • Widget system
  • Easy to customize with themes (powered by Smarty)

As you can see, it has all the usual bells and whistles most bloggers are looking for.

Looking for help using FlatPress?  They have a very nice wiki available with tons of useful links and helpful information.  They have forums too.  To see FlatPress in action, go check out the FlatPress blog.

To get a good idea on what you can do to theme it, check out their test blog here:

+ http://themes.flatpress.org/

You can download FlatPress for free, and give it a shot.  If you are looking to support one of the many other free blog scripts out there, using FlatPress would be a great way to get started.

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Eggblog, the Free PHP MySQL Blogging Script

Nov/27 in Web Development Tutorials

timesonline While a little light on documentation, Eggblog looks to be a nice alternative blogging script for those of you who might not want to follow the fold and use WordPress or one of the other more popular solutions out there.

Some of the features of Eggblog are:

  • easy to use web-based administration to add, edit and delete news articles
  • easy to use web-based configuration to manage your web site settings
  • WYSIWYG easy-to-use text editor for publishing or editing news articles
  • download themes to easily change the style, layout and colors of your site

I also like the forum feature, which is simple – yet unique. You can check it out (with examples) on Eggblog’s own web site. Check Eggblog out in action here:

The installation process looks pretty easy.  You download it, edit the configuration files, and then you are done.  They also have an installation guide to help you along the way.  The server requirements are lightweight too.  You only need to have a fairly modern version of PHP, MySQL, and the PHP-GD library.  There are a number of different themes you can use too, just in case your not happy with the default one.

If you want to check out a demo of the script in action, be sure to visit this page for the login details.  Eggblog might not have all the features that a script like WordPress might have, but it is a nice alternative if you want to move away from the fold.

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Cross Browser Web Dev Widgets

Jul/15 in Web Development Tutorials

Javascript Widgets The team behind Meteora have set out to do something different and cool.  They have launched a lunch box filled with rich and customizable web applications that you can use right here, right now.  No pages of documentation to be read, and no need for excessive programing knowledge.

Here are a few more details from the developers:

Meteora is built on top of MooTools and the package comes with a full version of that framework. If you’re already a MooTools user you may read Quick start for mootools users, if you have not used MooTools before just keep reading.

After you have uncompressed Meteora, you’ll notice that it’s around 1.1M in size, this is mainly because of all the images it contains, also because it’s distributed with a full version of the MooTools framework. But do not worry about loading times, with Meteora’s automatic dependency resolution your browser will download only the javascript the page needs and nothing more.

I do have to say, some of this looks even easy enough for me to wrap my head around.  These tools would be perfect to slice into your recent project or web page and offer a lot of eye candy and functionality to the mix. 

Not convinced yet?  Check out the demos to see this powerful set of tools at work.

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Can’t Beat Web 2.0? Copy Them Instead!

Feb/28 in Web Development Tutorials

How does it go again, if you can’t beat them – join them? How about copying them instead? There seem to be a lot of clone scripts out there for some of the more popular destinations on the Web.

invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-movie-poster1 Attack of the Web 2.0 Clones!

* = need to pay for it
** = not really a clone, is the software used to run Wikipedia

See, even you can run your own Web 2.0 masterpiece! All you need is a little time, a solid hosting account and your own origional take, version or spin on the already popular idea.

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Gmail 2 Greasemonkey Scripts

Nov/13 in Hot Web Topics

Gmail 2 and GreasemonkeyAs some might have realized by now, the new Gmail is great and all – but it breaks a lot of old Greasemonkey scripts that i have grown to love. Over time though, it seems that these crafty developers won’t be held down. Instead they are re-tooling their work and getting them back out there for the public to enjoy.

Here is the list of Greasemonkey scripts that are now working with the new Gmail 2 interface.

Some of these have been wrapped into the new Better Gmail 2 (from the Lifehacker crew) and I am sure others will follow suit. Know of any others that I might have missed?

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Hide Sidebar Link in Google Reader

Aug/21 in Online Apps

Hide Google Reader SidebarWant to hide the sidebar menu in Google Reader but you can’t remember exactly which keyboard combination that was suppose to be? For the combination challenged – I have found a great Greasemonkey user script that does the trick.

The GR Menu Hider gives you that option. After installing it just click the link and your sidebar is there – then it is not. By hiding the menu you can have a larger space to read your feeds.

Tip: For those of you who don’t want the extra script, the way you hide the sidebar via the keyboard shortcut is by hitting the “U” key.

You can go pick up the Greasemonkey script here to install. The only thing different was I wish it was a little icon instead of the words “Toggle menu”. That just seems to stick out like a sore thumb to me.

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