maniacal rage

I've just upgraded this site to the newest beta of SimpleLog version 1.5 to test out some of the new features in a more real-world environment. As part of that upgrade, I've changed the design to something I've been working on on and off for the past few weeks alongside developing the app itself. If you're using a news reader, you might want to visit the site to see what looks like now.

This design is a work in progress, and I'll be making tweaks as time goes on, in between work on the new version of SimpleLog.

A few things of note about this design (and version 1.5 of the app as well):

• It should be significantly faster to load, due to the massive speed-up in version 1.5.
• SimpleLog now has "static" page functionality, which I've used to create an about page.
• The text is much, much bigger. Looking at the old design before, I thought the text was sized just fine, but when I started working on this and made it larger, I realized just how small the text was before. It felt tiny. This text is much larger and I love it. I actually might make it even bigger in the long run.
• Yes, it's a dark background with light text... sorry, but I like this better than black on white. Black on white hurts my eyes. I code in dark on dark, and I prefer to read dark on dark. I'll probably create an alternate stylesheet that's inverted for those of you who want it. Probably.

Redesigning is fun. I really enjoy it. I used to do it a lot more, but it takes time and it kills everything else (I never post when I'm redesigning because I'm too busy redesigning to post). Now that it's done I look forward to wrapping up this version of SimpleLog and releasing it (oh, and writing more here too).

I'm about to hit the first real beta of the next major version of SimpleLog, and I'm once again in need of some beta testers. If you're interested, ask yourself the following three questions:

1. Do you have time to install a beta version of SimpleLog and run it through its paces? A few times? And give useful feedback?

2. Do you have a place to install a beta version (say, for instance, Rails installed locally or a place on a remote server to test that isn't your live site)?

3. Do you actually want to beta test this application, or are you thinking you do because it sounds fun in principle but you probably don't really have the time?

If you answered yes to all off the above questions, feel free to send an email to garrett at maniacalrage dot net with the subject "Testing SimpleLog." I want to be very clear that I need help from beta testers, and that means you actually need to test the app—in the past I have had a lot of people sign up and then never test the app at all.

Oh, and what's in the new version? A few new things:

• Comment functionality (yes, that's right, comments, see below)
• Admin section has been visually enhanced
• Bug fixes
• Tons of other little things

About comments: I said in the beginning that SimpleLog wouldn't have comment support, and I've talked about how great it is not to have comment functionality on this site before. But, the truth is, it's by far the most requested feature and I knew that eventually I'd have to do it.

The good news is, I made the system completely turn-off-able if you wish to do so (like I will, for instance). And if you turn it off, you'll never see it or be bothered by it. If you decide to turn it on, it's a pretty robust system, including blacklisting, comment approval, gravatar support, et cetera.

Update: I've got enough now, thanks!

Yesterday, I upgraded this site to SimpleLog 1.1—a process that's remarkably simple (no pun intended) and works really well. It's amazing to see how many little changes I made between the two versions and just how much more efficient the app is now. Especially when writing posts.

For instance, if you compare the post form from 1.0 with the post form from 1.1, you'll see that 1.1 definitely drives more toward the app being all about writing and less about the clunky details of maintaining a weblog (note that the content preview is still there in 1.1, it just isn't showing because there's no content yet in that post). Then, of course, if you look at the post form from 1.1 fully expanded, you'll see that all of the options you want are there, they're just hidden by default to make you focus a bit more.

The difference between the two designs already feels significant to me. Writing this post seemed easier without all the static.

We're in release candidate testing of version 1.1, and it should be released to the public next week. Shortly after release, I'm going to set up Trac and SVN publicly so people can track changes from this point on.

I've been pouring most of my free time into SimpleLog 1.1, which is nearly ready for release. Remember all that talk about it being a pain to upgrade from 1.0? Yeah, well, you can forget that. I've written a few rake tasks that take care of all the hard work for you.

In fact, you won't really have to change anything when upgrading (unless you've made modifications to files other than the views, like adding features to controllers or such).

The process will be as such:

1. Place a rake task called simplelog_themer into your current SimpleLog install and run it. This will create a theme from your currently customized views, change configuration references to the new preference methods, and even convert image paths to relative in your CSS and JavaScript.

2. Copy that theme, config/site.rb and config/database.yml from your current install to the new SimpleLog version directory.

3. Replace your current install with the new version entirely.

4. Run rake simplelog_upgrade

Then you've got a fully-upgraded install of SimpleLog 1.1, and you can go and customize your preferences (now in the admin section, and includes many new prefs), including selecting your theme (which will be aptly titled OnePointOh). You can also choose from the two built-in themes (a new default theme has been added in 1.1).

I'm hoping to release version 1.1 as early as next week, as soon as we finish testing (I'm currently making sure the app works in postgres and sqlite). It's been a lot of work, but the app has really been shaping up the last few weeks and I'm excited to release it.

I've been working on SimpleLog 1.1 for a few days now, and I'm getting close to releasing it for testing (see more on that below). What started out as a simple (no pun intended) update turned out to be a fairly massive one—in addition to moving preferences into the database (and also creating a preferences page in the admin section), fixing issues for Window users, and simplifying the post form, I've also put a basic theme system in place, based on the theme_generator Matt McCray wrote and released.

Don't get nervous—it's not a theme system in the sense that you need to learn a new language or any of that. Everything is exactly how it was, it's just easier to modify your site because all the layout/views/javascript/stylesheets/images for your site are in one place.

The good news is that this means future upgrades will be easy to manage—you'll simply overwrite all of your SimpleLog files and then copy your "theme" back into the themes folder.

The bad news is that upgrading from 1.0 to 1.1 is going to be a pain for some people who have customized views and such. Not in the sense that I've switched to a template system, but more in the sense that the move of the configuration to the database required that I change a lot of the references to configuration in the views. Also, I've changed nearly every other file of the package with this change.

So it might be a bit of a pain.

But it will be worth it—this version of SimpleLog will effectively future-proof adding preference features (right now, if I add a preference, you'll have to add it to your customized site.rb file by hand when upgrading—yuck!), and make it easy to upgrade without having to recreate your views. Plus, down the road, you could share your SimpleLog templates as well.

And hell, this is only 1.1. There are plenty of other little things coming after this release, but the pain is necessary to make the system better.

I'm going to be in need of some testers again for 1.1. I'd love it if you only contact me if you're sincerely interested in testing SimpleLog—you'll need to at least install it and let me know how it goes. Interested individuals should send an email to garrett at maniacalrage.net with the subject "Test new SimpleLog."

Update: Have enough testers now, thanks!

I've finally had a chance to switch this site over to my new weblog application, SimpleLog. We're only a few days from release to the public, and things are looking good. Feedback has been very positive and I'm excited to release this into the wild.

In the mean time, it's nice to have the new app in place here, since its administration section is leaps-and-bounds better than my previous version and it's much more fun to post now.

One of the unfortunate side-effects of this transition is that my RSS feed will show up as new for everyone. Sorry about that.

Thanks to everyone who signed up to test my weblog application. I released the first beta today—hopefully this beta process will be swift and I'll release to the public in a week or so.

This is the first project I've done using Rails for mass release, and I have to say that the process was fast, fun and a great learning experience. I've only recently begun using functional and unit testing in Rails—something I should have been doing from the beginning but wasn't—and I love it. Never has it been so easy to test and debug an application. Rails constantly surprises me.

The only low point in the development and testing process was getting the app to deploy at Dreamhost, whose Rails implementation is just downright difficult and maddening at times. It's frustrating that DH can't seem to get it going correctly (a while back they upgraded to Rails 1.1 and broke everyone's sites because of errors in the upgrade process, and had to roll back to 1.0 because of it). Luckily, with plenty of help from the Rails IRC channel and about three hours of searching Google, I manage to concoct a work-around for all of the silly FCGI issues DH has and was able to install the app on Dreamhost trouble-free. Hopefully my testers will have the same experience.

As I've said before: If you want good Rails hosting, go with Segpub. They are the official hosting provider selection for my weblog application, and I don't get any compensation for saying that. I know I sound like a broken record, but I can't say it enough.

I'm going to switch this site over to the new app in a day or two, once I find the time.