spud-rails/spud_blog

Blog Management Engine - Blog / News / Comments, and Spam Protection Support

Spud Blog

Spud Blog is a Blog Engine designed to be robust, easy to use, and light weight.

NOTE: This project is still in its early infancy.

Release Notes

• 0.8.15 - Increased Spam Protection and Akismet spam service support (Check further down in Readme for instructions)

Installation/Usage

1. In your Gemfile add the following

    gem 'spud_core'
    gem 'spud_blog'
   

2. Run bundle install

3. Copy in database migrations to your new rails project

    bundle exec rake railties:install:migrations
    rake db:migrate
   

4. run a rails server instance and point your browser to /spud/admin

Configuration

Spud Blog current accepts the following configuration options.

Spud::Blog.configure do |config|
  config.base_layout = 'blog'
  config.blog_enabled = true
  config.news_enabled = true
  config.blog_path = 'blog'
  config.news_path = 'news'
  config.posts_per_page = 5
  config.has_custom_fields = false
  config.custom_fields = []
  config.caching_enabled = true
  config.caching_expires_in = 1.hour
end

Customizing Views

A number of built-in views have been provided to help you get started with the frontend display. Customzing these views will require you to copy them into your local application, which can be accomplished by using the views generator.

rails generate spud:blog:views

NOTE: The built-in views are likely to undergo changes as features are added to the blogging engine. If a new version of Spud Blog does not play nicely with your customized views, try backing up your views to an alternate location and running the views generator again to see what has changed.

Javascript Driver

Spud Blog includes a small, unobtrusive javascript driver that adds functionality to the built-in views. Including the driver is optional, as all client-side views and controllers are designed to work whether you include it or not.

<%= javascript_include_tag 'spud/blog' %>

Custom Fields

You may find that your blog requires a field that isn't included in the default spud_post model. Adding custom fields is easy.

1. Set has_custom_fields to true in your Spud Blog configuration
2. Create a migration adding the necessary column(s) to your database

class AddCaptionToPosts < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    add_column :spud_posts, :caption, :string
  end
end

3. Add an array of the new custom fields to Spud::Blog.config.custom_fields in application.rb for strong parameter filtering.

Spud::Blog.configure do |config|
  config.custom_fields = [:caption]
end

4. Save a view partial at app/views/spud/admin/posts/_custom_fields.html.erb with the desired inputs

<div class="control-group">
    <%= f.label :caption, 'Caption',:class => "control-label" %>
    <div class="controls">
        <%= f.text_field :caption %>
    </div>
</div>

Extending the Post Model

Rails engines allow you to extend or even completely override classes by adding them to your local application. Source files found in your local app's path will take precedence over those found within the Spud Blog gem. Lets say you wanted to extend the SpudPost model.

1. Create a file at app/models/spud_post.rb

2. Add the following code:

    # Use this helper method to pull in the SpudPost source code from the engine
    Spud::Blog::Engine.require_model('spud_post')
   
    # Add your own methods to SpudPost
    class SpudPost
        attr_accessible :caption
        def byline
            return "'#{self.title}' was posted by #{self.author.full_name} on #{self.display_date}"
        end
    end
   

Akismet Support

Spud Blog Engine now supports spam comment filtering using akismet. All you have to do is configure the rakismet gem and enable_rakismet in the spud_blog configuration. Add the following to your application.rb file

Spud::Blog.configure do |config|
    config.enable_rakismet = true
end
config.rakismet.key = "your key here"
config.rakismet.url = 'http://yourdomain.com/'

Also make sure to add the rakismet gem to your gemfile

    gem 'rakismet'

Testing

Spud uses RSpec for testing. Get the tests running with a few short commands:

1. Create and migrate the databases:

    rake db:create
    rake db:migrate
   

2. Load the schema in to the test database:

    rake app:db:test:prepare
   

3. Run the tests with RSpec

    rspec spec
   

After the tests have completed the current code coverage stats is available by opening /coverage/index.html in a browser.

spud_blog's Issues

Rails 4 upgrade

The following things need implemented for rails4 ...

• Strong Parameters
• Unify admin controllers for news/blog
• Rspec test upgrades
• Unified Renderer platform for support for things like markdown and more
• Fixes on scopes
• Removal of attr_accessible

Comment management

There doesn't appear to be a way to remove comments from a blog post. How do I get rid of the spam? Oh, and... better comment spam protection is needed.

Merge sweepers

It may be advisable to merge all 3 of your sweepers into one like I did in spud cms. This will help keep the code are down in size if possible.

Move Categories into subapp

Make the Post Categories "App" in admin a sub application of posts and news.

Rakismet Support

Use gem 'rakismet' to implement rakismet support. This gem should not be required, but when added automatically enabled.