[ANN] Radiant CMS 0.6.3 Rock Grinder Release

Rails
1

Looks like it’s time for another release of Radiant:

http://radiantcms.org/download/

This release contains many progressive changes and bugfixes, especially
with respect to the extension system. Of special note are:

  • conversion to using ActiveRecord-based sessions and storing the id of
    the logged-in user in the session instead of the complete user object
  • addition of the ability to specify the loading-order (and
    inclusion/exclusion) of extensions in environment.rb
  • automatic loading of Rails plugins included in extensions upon
    activation.

WHAT IS RADIANT CMS?

Radiant is a no-fluff content management system made for designers and
programmers and is ideal for use on small teams. It is similar to
Movable Type or Textpattern, but is much more than a blogging engine.

Radiant features:

  • An elegant user interface
  • The ability to arrange pages in a hierarchy
  • Flexible templating with layouts, snippets, page parts, and a
    custom tagging language (Radius: http://radius.rubyforge.org)
  • A dynamic extension system
  • A simple user management/permissions system
  • Support for Markdown and Textile as well as traditional HTML
    (it’s easy to create other filters)
  • Operates in two modes: dev and production depending on the URL
  • A caching system which expires pages every 5 minutes
  • Built using Ruby on Rails (which means that extending Radiant is
    as easy as any other Rails application)
  • Licensed under the MIT-License
  • And much more…

There’s even a live demo over on the project Web site:

http://radiantcms.org/demo/

WHAT’S NEW IN THIS RELEASE?

  • Add generic public/ copy task to generated extensions. [Sean C.]
  • Fix typo in StandardTags. [oli]
  • Added db:remigrate:extensions task. [Sean C.]
  • Show all child pages on remove confirmation, regardless of sitemap
    expansion. [Sean C.]
  • Make LoginSystem store user ids in session rather than whole user
    objects. [Sean C.]
  • Plugins included in an extension’s vendor/plugins directory will
    automatically
    be loaded before the extension is activated. Plugins included in more
    than one extension
    will be loaded only once according to the extension load order. [Sean
    Cribbs]
  • Allow subclassing of FileNotFoundPage. [Daniel S.]
  • <r:find/> should not return FileNotFoundPage. [Daniel S.]
  • Change test for tabs to just check dupes and for the requested tab
    rather than a specific list (test was breaking if a real extension
    added
    a tab). [Daniel S.]
  • Ensure test extensions are loaded in the test environment. [Daniel
    Sheppard]
  • Prevent ExtensionInitializationTest from unloading real extensions.
    [Daniel S.]
  • Expire the old URL from the cache when the page slug changes. [Daniel
    Sheppard]
  • Fix failing tests in instance mode. [Daniel S.]
  • Move difference assertions upstream from forms extension into a test
    helper. [Sean C.]
  • Update Prototype to 1.5.0 final release. [Sean C.]
  • Allow specification of extension loading order in environment.rb
    [Daniel S.]
  • Fix bugs in assert_global_tag_defined and assert_tag_defined of
    ExtensionTagTestHelper. [Sean C.]
  • Make sure included stylesheets and javascripts are only linked to once
    in. [Sean C.]
  • Fix navigation tag tests. [vitali]
  • Suppress errors about missing default helper by providing a blank
    helper.
    [Sean C.]
  • Fix mis-alignment of “Clear cache” button when homepage not present.
    [Sean C.]
  • Fix issues with misnesting of modules in fixture loading extension and
    test suites running randomly from dispatchers. [Sean C.]
  • Remove invalid image alignment. [tolbrino]
  • Display not_found.rhtml on standard ‘not found’-like exceptions. [Sean
    Cribbs]
  • Make sitemap.js use relative URLs. [Earl C.]
  • Preliminary support for active_record sessions. [John L.]

INSTALLATION

We’ve worked hard to make it easy to install Radiant. For starters you
can download it with Ruby Gems:

% gem install --include-dependencies radiant

Once the Radiant gem is installed you have access to the radiant
command. The radiant command is similar to the rails command (if you
are from the Rails world. It’s how you generate a new Radiant project
for a website. So cd to the directory where you would like your
instance to be installed and type:

% radiant -d [mysql|postgres|sqlite3] .

Next, edit config/database.yml to taste. Then run the rake bootstrap
task:

% rake production db:bootstrap

And start up the test server:

% script/server -e production

Finally, hit the /admin/ URL and you should be off to the races. See the
README file in the release for additional details.

If you are interested in other download options, visit the download
page: http://radiantcms.org/download/.

UPGRADING FROM 0.6.x

  1. Update the Radiant gem:

    % gem update radiant

  2. Change the RADIANT_GEM_VERSION constant in config/environment.rb
    to “0.6.3”.

  3. Run the update rake task:

    rake radiant:update

  4. Run the Radiant migrations:

    rake production db:migrate

  5. Restart the server

UPGRADING FROM 0.5.x

The upgrade process changed significantly from last release, so listen
up! To upgrade an existing installation, BACKUP YOUR DATABASE, update
the gem, and create a new Radiant project using the instructions above.
Then point Radiant to the right database by editing config/database.yml
and execute the following command in your project directory:

% rake db:migrate

If you have problems during the upgrade, please let us know.

CONTRIBUTORS

Radiant wouldn’t be possible without the help of some fine people. The
following people have made contributions to this release:

  • oli * Daniel S. * vitali
  • tolbrino * Sean C. * Earl C.
  • John L.

Thanks guys! If you’d like to hop on the development band wagon head on
over to our dev site (http://dev.radiantcms.org/).

SUPPORT

The best place to get support is definitely on the Radiant mailing list.
There’s a crowd of people there who have been hanging around for many
moons now. Newbie questions are welcome! To sign up, go to:

http://radiantcms.org/mailing-list/

The Radiant mailing list is also accessible via Ruby forum:

http://www.ruby-forum.com/forum/21

Enjoy!

–
Sean C.
for the Radiant CMS Dev Team
http://radiantcms.org