New user questions

Ruby Apps Radiant CMS
1

Hi,

I’m planning to use radiant to power a website, but before taking the
plunge I have some questions. I installed the 0.6 release candidate.
Here are questions I couldn’t answer by looking at the docs or the
mailing list archive:

  • an applicaiton created with the radiant command doesn’t apparently
    contain the radiant code. Is there a way to freeze it to the gems used
    like for rails applications? (I saw in environment.rb that the gem
    used is referenced) I didn’t see it in the rake tasks available.

  • a related question: Will there be attention paid to upgrade
    procedures to future versions? I’d like to follow the latest release,
    but won’t be able to afford long downtimes.

  • Having all templates and layouts in the database is not the most
    user friendly to edit. Only for my tests I have lost time because the
    ‘Save and continue editing’ looses the position of my cursor when the
    page reload. Is there a way to store layouts in files? An “ajax” way
    of saving the changes when editing in the browser would be a
    workaround. I would still prefer templates in files (that way, if you
    want to change the design, you can do it in development on all layouts
    to be changed, and have it all transfered at once, to the production
    server. In this case I find it much easier to sync files and
    directories than DBs)

  • If I want to let people register on the site, what’s the best way to
    do it? Add a controller in the radiant installation? Run an additional
    rails app to just handle this?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Raph

–
Web database: http://www.myowndb.com
Free Software Developers Meeting: http://www.fosdem.org

2

On 3/8/07, Raphael B. [email protected] wrote:

  • an applicaiton created with the radiant command doesn’t apparently
    contain the radiant code. Is there a way to freeze it to the gems used
    like for rails applications?

I’m using the SVN checkout. It is self-contained.

  • a related question: Will there be attention paid to upgrade

procedures to future versions? I’d like to follow the latest release,
but won’t be able to afford long downtimes.

Upgrade procedures should be painless thanks to Rails migrations.

Is there a way to store layouts in files?

No. It would pretty complicated I guess

An “ajax” way

of saving the changes when editing in the browser would be a
workaround.

Yeah, much better solution.

  • If I want to let people register on the site, what’s the best way to

do it? Add a controller in the radiant installation?

You should go with Radiant extensions

Run an additional rails app to just handle this?

Ugh - no :slight_smile:

3

Raphael B. wrote:

  • an applicaiton created with the radiant command doesn’t apparently
    contain the radiant code. Is there a way to freeze it to the gems used
    like for rails applications? (I saw in environment.rb that the gem
    used is referenced) I didn’t see it in the rake tasks available.

With 0.6rc1 the easiest way to do this is to extract the gem into the
vendor/radiant directory, or to check radiant out using subversion into
your vendor/radiant directory. (I like to use SVN externals to simplify
this.)

There is now a series rake tasks in the repository to make this a little
easier:

$ rake radiant:freeze:gems

~ or ~

$ rake radiant:freeze:edge BRANCH=mental

  • a related question: Will there be attention paid to upgrade
    procedures to future versions? I’d like to follow the latest release,
    but won’t be able to afford long downtimes.

If you are using instance mode the upgrade procedure looks like this:

$ gem update radiant

Now edit config/environment.rb so that RADIANT_GEM_VERSION is set to the
new version. Continue with:

$ cd /path/to/radiant/install
$ rake radiant:update

The radiant:update rake tasks are new in the repository as of last
night.

  • Having all templates and layouts in the database is not the most
    user friendly to edit. Only for my tests I have lost time because the
    ‘Save and continue editing’ looses the position of my cursor when the
    page reload. Is there a way to store layouts in files? An “ajax” way
    of saving the changes when editing in the browser would be a
    workaround. I would still prefer templates in files (that way, if you
    want to change the design, you can do it in development on all layouts
    to be changed, and have it all transfered at once, to the production
    server. In this case I find it much easier to sync files and
    directories than DBs)

At the moment, templates must be stored in the DB. If you are looking
for an easier way to edit layouts, I’d suggest the “Edit in Textmate”
command (if you are a Textmate user or something similar if you use
another editor).

I’d like to eventually add better export and import functionality to
Radiant. This would certainly simplify what you are talking about.

  • If I want to let people register on the site, what’s the best way to
    do it? Add a controller in the radiant installation? Run an additional
    rails app to just handle this?

Create an extension with a custom controller.

–
John L.
http://wiseheartdesign.com

4

On Mar 8, 2007, at 9:37 AM, John W. Long wrote:

I’d suggest the “Edit in Textmate”
command (if you are a Textmate user or something similar if you use
another editor).

sorry john, I’m not following you. what?

5

David Minor wrote:

On Mar 8, 2007, at 9:37 AM, John W. Long wrote:

I’d suggest the “Edit in Textmate”
command (if you are a Textmate user or something similar if you use
another editor).

sorry john, I’m not following you. what?

TextMate has a feature which allows you to press a special hotkey that
you can press when you are in a browser which allows you edit the text
of the current textarea from within the TextMate editor. It’s great when
you need to edit a complex stylesheet or layout.

–
John L.
http://wiseheartdesign.com