I’ve just released version 0.2.1 of Thoth, the simple Ruby blog engine that powers wonko.com. Notable changes in this release include:
- Requires Sequel 2.5.x (this fixes an issue with SQLite and DateTime objects).
- Requires RedCloth 4.0.x. Markdown syntax is no longer supported as a result.
- Names of existing tags are now suggested as you type in the “Tags” field when creating or editing a blog post.
- Blog post URL names can now be specified just like pages, and names are automatically validated and checked for uniqueness via Ajax. If you don’t manually enter a name, one will be created automatically based on the title.
- Comments are now deleted via Ajax when JavaScript is enabled, making it easier to delete multiple comments without having to reload the page.
- A
rel="nofollow"attribute is now automatically added to links in user comments. - When minification is enabled, filenames in the public
/cssand/jsdirectories that have names ending in-min.cssor-min.jswill be served as is since they are presumably already minified. - Fixed a bug that prevented client-side caching of CSS and JS when server-side caching and minification were enabled.
- Fixed internal server error when viewing a tag that isn’t attached to any posts.
To install Thoth for the first time, run:
gem install thoth
Or, to upgrade an existing Thoth blog:
gem update thoth cd /path/to/blog thoth -d stop thoth --migrate thoth -d start
Note the database migration step, which is necessary if you’re upgrading from a version of Thoth older than 0.2.0. Your existing data will be preserved, but you may want to make a backup first if you’re paranoid.
Comments
Wordpress
I’m actually seriously contemplating making my own blog and was going to go with Wordpress (for no real reason other than it’s really popular and it’s the first thing that comes to mind). Do you know anything about customizing a Wordpress blog? I figure it probably isn’t that hard. I want to do something completely custom (theme-wise) so figure once I have things broken out into flat HTML/CSS/JS, it should just be a matter of dropping in my code with Wordpress’ PHP. Snip, snip, cut, trim, blah, blah, blah…
Shouldn’t be too big of a problem, right?
Re: Wordpress
WordPress is relatively easy to customize, but unfortunately it’s a bloated pile of crap with a long history of terrible performance and ridiculous security vulnerabilities. I’ve written about it here a few times. Unfortunately there isn’t much out there in the way of blog software that’s both easy to use and doesn’t suck.
At any rate, I strongly recommend using anything but WordPress.
What would you recommend?
That uses PHP and is easily setup/customized?
Re: What would you recommend?
As I said, anything but WordPress. ;)
Call me a curmudgeon, but I’m not aware of any PHP blog software that doesn’t suck under the hood. If PHP is a requirement, you’re probably going to have to decide how much suckage you’re willing to put up with.
I just remembered
The YUI Blog is using WordPress. They must be getting some decent traffic, how do you think they’re dealing with it?
Re: I just remembered
There are several third-party output caching solutions for WordPress. Any blog that needs to serve more than a few requests per second is probably using one of those to mitigate the pain of having to execute 20+ DB queries per pageview.
Run my own migrations
Hi again Ryan. I’m trying to run my own migrations, but they only work if i put them into the migrate folder in the thoth gem folder – they’re not picked up if i put them in my local migrate folder.
I’ve been trying to avoid modifying the core thoth code, by instead using plugins, but this sort of hurdle is making me want to just fork the code and start modding it as a standalone app (as you suggested earlier) rather than a gem. Am i just being dumb and missing something?
thanks a lot! max
Re: Run my own migrations
Thoth doesn’t check your home directory for migrations; it only looks in the gem folder. If your plugin is going to require database schema modifications, it would probably be a better idea to just fork, since managing plugin-specific schema migrations would be a nightmare.
Re: Run my own migrations
Thanks Ryan – i’m modifying the gem code now as you suggested. If i manage to produce something that isn’t a big hacky mess i’ll try to factor out my changes into plugins and add them up.
cheers!
max