A Sexier Mephisto
Mephisto is a fantastic CMS. I have really enjoyed using it, and love the way it is set up and organized.
However, I’ve always thought that it was missing a couple of key features.
First, there is no form of pagination for lists of articles, including the front page. Once you’re done with the front page, you must use the archives.
Second, it doesn’t provide a full listing of archives. Archives are only listed by month. There is no way to grab all of your posts, only a limited number of posts.
However, now there are two great plugins to add in these features.
First, Sven Fuchs has written a Paged Article Lists to give lists of posts (such as your front page) pagination links. You can see this in action at the bottom of my index page. I helped (read: was really irritating) in bugfixing it so it should work smoothly.
Next, there is now a great Full Archives plugin (also by Sven Fuchs) to allow your main archives page show a full listing of all of your posts. You can see this in action on my past page. It is called the tricky edition which is actually named after me because of all my suggestions and bugfixing (read: was really really irritating).
Baiscally a great way to manage content on the internet just got way better. Yay for Mephisto! Yay for plugins!
Running Mephisto on Leopard
This is just a quick note incase anyone else has trouble installing the Mephisto svn locally on a clean copy of Leopard.
(This assumes you’re running Leopard and have a working install of MySQL. For that please see this wonderful guide. It also assumes you’ve set up Mephisto before.)
The current Mephisto svn revision, 3037 works on Rails 2.0 PR. So to do this, you’d check out the svn of Mephisto:
svn co http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/mephisto/trunk your_directoryNext you’d freeze Rails 2.0 PR, in terminal, cd to your local Mephisto directory, and run:
rake rails:freeze:edge TAG=rel_2-0-0_RC1Next you need to install the tzinfo gem and Action Web Service, with two terminal commands (while cd’d in your local Mephisto directory), running each separately:
gem install tzinfo --remoteAnd
svn export http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails/trunk/actionwebservice/ vendor/rails/actionwebserviceOk! Next up you must create a Mephisto database with MySQL and properly configure your database settings in config/database.yml. Then you should be able to successfully run in terminal (in your Mephisto directory):
rake db:bootstrapOr
rake db:bootstrap RAILS_ENV=production
Start your favorite script/server for a lovely working copy of edge Mephisto on Leopard!
Many thanks to svenfuchs_ in #mephisto for the advice on a working Rails version!
Mephisto — First Impressions
So I have been spending a little time playing with Mephisto, a very promising rails CMS. Here are some initial observations…
It has sections, just like TextPattern. However, Mephisto itself seems to be a bit confused about what a section actually is. Is a section a category? Is a section a separate website section? The beautiful part is that Mephisto is flexible enough so that you can use sections for whatever you would like. It can be category, or it can be a site section. It can use blog posts, or page posts. It can pretty much do whatever you want, without getting too confusing.**
Mephisto uses Liquid Templates. Liquid was created by the same guy who made Typo. One thing about Typo I loved was its template system. I don’t remember what it was like exactly, but I never had any trouble with it. Liquid isn’t exactly the same. Liquid doesn’t have much documentation, and some aspects are rather confusing. I love how flexible it is, and how I can make things look pretty with fun loop variables and such. I just hate the lack of specific working examples of many sorts, and the lack of a true tag list. Ok, so there is a brief tag list, but this is hardly comprehensive. It is safe to say I’m pretty confused.
I’m pretty sure that Typo (at least last year) just used rails views and you grabbed stuff from the database. It was super simple and awesome. Liquid is sort of like that, but a whole lot more confusing. I could be totally wrong though, but whatever Typo used, it was pretty painless.
Mephisto is young. It is only officially around version 0.7.3. It does not have its complete feature set yet, however it (seems) to be extremely stable. Except when it comes to plugins. I have yet to make a single plugin work. I have tried with both the official version and the svn trunk. For being so young though, Mephisto sure is awesome.
I really want to move to Mephisto as soon as possible. My layout is almost totally ported. The main problems have to do with a couple peculiarities with liquid templates and issues with plugins. At this point it looks exactly the same, but when you click the kitty, there is nothing in the top box, and that is no fun.
In totally separate news, all of the javacsript effects on the site have been changed to mootools. I figured out a very silly way of keeping the top box hidden on load. A very silly way. You should (hopefully) be saving a whole bunch of loading time because of this change.
**Yes, I realize that this is possible in WordPress, as long as you have a tagging plugin to replace traditional category functionality. Still, Mephisto’s sections offer much more customization then WordPress’s categories without any plugins.
Geeky Sillyness
My boyfriend’s wireless router was on the fritz. It could not stay online for more then a few minutes at a time. A paperclip couldn’t fit in well enough to actually activate the reset button. So we went ahead and took it apart. As we suspected, the rest button worked and the router was in good shape although it did not have its casing. We found an old broken Dreamcast controller and got to work. For an hour’s worth of geeky fun and a couple of beers, it came out pretty nicely.
As for the site, it has been running on my first official WordPress theme. The code is valid, simple, and as semantically correct as I’m going to get without losing my mind. It is something I can be proud of and hopefully use as a template for new layouts. Next up: exploring TextPattern! Might take a nap first, though.
Lists Are Fun
Lists are so much more fun to write. I’m not sure if it is a good thing or not, but most likely most of my posts will be in list format.
I’m going to make a WordPress theme from scratch. Hacking a theme was great for learning about how WordPress works, but I want to make a cleaner and leaner theme that I can (hopefully) use as a basis for future layouts. I think it will make future layouts and possibly porting to another CMS much easier.
I’m pretty sure after I make a clean theme I’m going to end up at least trying TextPattern on my machine. The whole sections concept is genius. I just wish there was a TextMate bundle for TextPattern designing. That would rock and totally help with the template tag learning curve. I don’t know if I’ll ever be sure about which CMS I like better.
I am much more pleased with WordPress then I was expecting. I was really frustrated by its lack of tag or keyword support. I tried using Ultimate Tag Warrior but it changes the database and I’m still not sure how to get it to work with an external editor (specifically TextMate) without a bunch of hacking that could create nightmares when updating. It then occurred to me I could just cheat and call WordPress’s categories tags. That way I’m not making huge modifications to the database or making a mess with extra scripting. It is not ideal though.
From my [limited] understanding, TextPattern has keyword support, and there is this plugin that works with the keyword support, so in theory it should work with xmlrpc and external editors out of the box (sweet!).
So yeah, thats what I’m going to do now. Woo!
Lather Rinse Repeat ‘07 — So Fresh and So Clean
Well it has been almost a year, but Lather Rinse Repeat is back! Yay! Back with a new layout run on a new CMS.
I just finished. I am getting quite sleepy. This is not completely done, of course, but it is certainly close enough. It is messy and although it validated through the software I used, it probably won’t validate on the web yet. So, here it is, as buggy and messy as possible.
For no particular reason here is a [short] list of observations I have made while making the new incarnation of Lather Rinse Repeat.
- Since this was my first time working with WordPress, I started with the Hemingway Theme and essentially hacked it to bits.
- The WordPress TextMate Bundle made working with new template tags pretty much painless.
- TextMate, between its excellent support for Markdown, WordPress and blogging in general, has completely exceeded my expectations of a text editor.
- I used TextMate with Typo, but I never really looked into what it could really do. Boy, can it do a lot.
- WordPress is a lovely CMS with a wonderful community full of resources. Is it perfect? No. Are there somethings plugins don’t fix yet? Yes. Will there every be a perfect CMS? Probably not. Will I keep looking for it and talking about it? Of course.
- I do still want to learn more ruby and eventually do it all on rails again. Keeping a stable version of Typo that was capable of being easily updated was just too difficult to handle last year. WordPress is pretty good if you want to to be able to do plenty of customizing while keeping some sort of upgrade-ability. Or at least it seems to so far.
And there you have it, here is the quick and dirty ‘07 version of Lather Rinse Repeat. Close to a year delayed, and created in a week. More stuff to come. I’m off to bed, I have to go to the dentist in the morning. Teeth are important. Yes they are.
Bits of Randomness
It took me over a month with a DVD burner to figure this out, but you can easily burn .avi files to DVD-player compatible format with iDVD as long as you use XviD Quicktime codecs.
My few-year-old iCurve seems to somehow be dying. My MBP is always at an angle, no matter how hard I try to make it even. It looks like its barely hanging on. I am seriously thinking of getting these instead. I have no idea what happened to my iCurve. It shouldn’t just suddenly make my laptop constantly tilt.
I need to take more photos. For example, a photo of the aforementioned iCuve tilt.
I am really perplexed by the default wordpress theme templates. I have no idea what is going on there. Secondly, every design idea looks too much like this one. The thing is, I still sort of like this one, which is making it harder to make it totally different. Oh well.
SPSS for mac OS X. This is the standard (as far as I know) psych stats program (at least we use at school). This means that if I end up doing something in the psych field (fairly likely since I’m a psych major) I won’t need to use Boot Camp. Neat.
This is really really terrible, but I am both eagerly anticipating and dreading the new intel iBooks that will eventually come out. I’m pretty sure I’m going to wish I had waited. While I love (love) my MBP, I’m going to wish for the form-factor, durability, and lower price-point. Of course my Powerboook died, and I could not resist the lure of the MBP. Ah. We’ll see.
Allergy season has officially started. Which is why the post before this one is so poorly written. I hadn’t taken my Claritin yet and my head was a mess. (Ok, so maybe it’s not that much better now.)
Hmf.
I need to think of better titles for entries.
Let’s face it, everything is about waiting.
Waiting for things to work together.
Waiting for things to be created.
I’m amazed, but importing all of my entries into word press was the easiest part of moving to wordpress. Everything else is, well, hard.
I tried using k2, and porting my theme over to it. I may still do this. It is just kind of… tedious.
k2 works with the new neat widgets plugin. Sort of. It won’t let the live search work. The only reason I think I’d use k2 (aside from the fact that it is just better looking while I port my theme over) is because it has livesearch. I have a feeling that someone will notice this very quickly and get it to work. I was able to get the livesearch working anyway for a bit, but now it’s not working anymore. Not like it matters.
Oh who knows. Maybe I’ll just stick Typo.
Ooooh! I saw Ice Age 2 last night. It was… ok. I thought it was much much better than the first one.
No more CMS discussion. For at least five minutes. I promise.
Oh Goodness
So, I downloaded copies of textpattern and wordpress and have been playing with both of them.
Here is the sad truth: try as I may, I like wordpress better.
It just seems to require less hacking in general. I just don’t have the time for all the hacking. Sure, wordpress is huge. Sure, its not that pretty. It also doesn’t have sections. This is probably my biggest problem with wordpress. That, and no matter how hard I try, textpattern just seems so much cooler. Of course, this might just be because of all the aforementioned hacking.
So, there is a good change I may eventually switch to wordpress. Once I figure out how on earth to port over my design, that is. Which may never, ever happen.
Oh, and I seriously love marsedit. Seriously.
Ruby/MySQL On Tiger
It took me about three hours to figure out how to properly install ruby/mysql on to my computer. About when I found the correct way to do so, I also found Locomotive, the all-inclusive installation for Mac OS X. I’m tired, and a bit frustraited I haven’t gotten to do much else, but at least it works, right? Right.
Oh Goodness
This afternoon I attended a Psychology Club meeting. It was the Graduate School Workshop, where my professor told us all about how hard it is to get into graduate school. I got such a headache from it. He went over his lecture by about half an hour. It was just incredibly stressfull.This afternoon I attended a Psychology Club meeting. It was the Graduate School Workshop, where my profossor told us all about how hard it is to get into graduate school. I got such a headache from it. He went over his lecture by about half an hour. The good news is if I can’t get into any of the doctoral programs I wanted to get into, I could always just get a masters first and a doctorate second. There’s always options. Ah. Stress.
