Radiant CMS 0.6 - Lapidary

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

    http://radiantcms.org/download/

This is the first serious release of Radiant in well over 6 months. The big news in this release is that we have created a first-class extension system to make it easier for you to tailor Radiant to meet your needs. Developers can now add their own models, views, and controllers and completely customize the administrative interface.

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?

* Added support for extensions--an extremely flexible way to extend    Radiant * Merged Behaviors into the Page class; subclass page now instead * Improved database support for Postgres and Sqlite * Limited support for SQL Server * Exceptions from tags now bubble up during testing * Page parts are now sorted by ID so the order that you create them in    is preserved [Josh Ferguson] * Implemented tag documentation DSL and UI [Sean Cribbs] * Reworked the setup code * Renamed script/setup_database to rake db:bootstrap * Reworked the upgrade code to work around rake tasks * Added rake tasks for freezing and unfreezing radiant to the edge * r:children:each, r:children:first, and r:children:last now all accept    the same ordering and limit attributes and have the same defaults * Snippets are now responsive to global context via the r:page tag. This    means that any tags inside r:page will refer to the page currently    being rendered, i.e. the page requested, not the local contextual page    via tags like r:children:each, etc. This is most relevant to recursive    snippets like the sitemapper example [Sean Cribbs] * r:navigation now uses the pipe character ("|") to delimit URLs in the    urls attribute rather than the semi-colon * :date now accepts a "for" attribute that specifies which attribute of    the page to render. Valid values of the attribute are published_at,    updated_at, created_at, and now. * Created the r:cycle tag to make alternating tables and lists possible * Added popups for filter and tag documentation inside the page editing    interface * Added support for optimistic locking for all models [Daniel Shepherd] * Added support to Radiant::Config for boolean values [Sean Cribbs] * Caching no longer stores the headers and body in the same file [Daniel    Shepherd] * Added support for the X-Sendfile header that works in conjunction with    caching to speed it up (by default X-Sendfile support is off) [Daniel    Shepherd] * Moved the images and stylesheets into images/admin and    stylesheets/admin respectively to make it easier for Radiant's assets    to coexist easily with the site's assets * Improved the Javascript that automatically updates the slug and    breadcrumb based off of the title so that it now response to all    change events * For the full scoop on what's changed see Sean Cribbs' detailed post:    What's New in Radiant 0.6 - Sean Cribbs

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 .

Next, create a database for your application and setup the appropriate config/database.yml file.

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 0.5.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:

* Alexander Horn * Adam Williams * Sean Santry * Sean Cribbs * Brian Gernhardt * Bodhi Philpot * Andrew Barnett * Jesse Newland * Josh Ferguson * Daniel Sheppard * Matte Edens * Jacob Burkhart * Chris Parrish

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!

One small question...

Lately I was looking into rails CMSses for setting up a small company- website, and I checked out mephisto, typo, comatose, and radiant, which I liked most...

So I was at the verge of choosing Radiant, when I followed the link at the bottom of the radiant-site, to your company, Wiseheart Design.

At the bottom of your page I found a link: Site powered by Mephisto...

Why make a CMS, and not use it yourself for what it seems to be made for ? Or is it a legacy, and on your todo-list to migrate to radiant ?

Wybo

Because Mephisto rules.... as a blog engine :slight_smile:

http://wiseheartdesign.com/2006/12/1/now-on-mephisto/

The site Radiant was created to support: http://www.ruby-lang.org/

Wybo Wiersma wrote:

One small question...

Lately I was looking into rails CMSses for setting up a small company- website, and I checked out mephisto, typo, comatose, and radiant, which I liked most...

So I was at the verge of choosing Radiant, when I followed the link at the bottom of the radiant-site, to your company, Wiseheart Design.

At the bottom of your page I found a link: Site powered by Mephisto...

Why make a CMS, and not use it yourself for what it seems to be made for ? Or is it a legacy, and on your todo-list to migrate to radiant ?

There were at least two reasons:

1. I had heard a lot about Mephisto and wanted to see what all the fuss     was about. I previously used Typo.

2. Because I needed a blogging engine that supports comments. Radiant     didn't at the time I needed something to power my blog.

There are now at least two extensions for comments under development. As soon as I have some spare time on my hands I will probably switch my blog over and use one of them.

But don't let me stop you from exploring both options. Mephisto is a fine blogging engine that can double as a CMS (sort of). Radiant is a CMS that can be used as a blogging engine, but is much more flexible.

It looks like Radiant is doing some form of action caching. You know there's a Rails plugin that can do what you've implemented, and more. Check it out here: http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/action_cache

If you need help with integrating this, I'm almost always available to help

Nice work. Next time I need a CMS, I'll check out Radiant again.

1. I had heard a lot about Mephisto and wanted to see what all the fuss     was about. I previously used Typo.

2. Because I needed a blogging engine that supports comments. Radiant     didn't at the time I needed something to power my blog.

There are now at least two extensions for comments under development. As soon as I have some spare time on my hands I will probably switch my blog over and use one of them.

Great!

But don't let me stop you from exploring both options. Mephisto is a fine blogging engine that can double as a CMS (sort of). Radiant is a CMS that can be used as a blogging engine, but is much more flexible.

Thanks for your answer. I'm currently checking both out and I'm going for Radiant.

greetings,

Wybo