Project Roller

Here's some happy news. A new committer has joined the Roller project. Shelan Perera has been helping out on the mailing lists, submitting fixes and recently won a Google Summer of Code (GSOC) project to add mobile blogging features to Roller. He was nominated for committership and voted in on May 5, 2011.

Shelan's GSOC project is to add mobile theming capabilities to Roller. You can find the Mobile Theming for Roller proposal on the GSOC website. Shelan is seeking feedback on requirements and design for the project, and keeping the community in the loop by running a blog to journal his progress: Apache Roller Mobile Platform.

Welcome Shelan!

If you’re a Roller user, developer, tester or technical writer then the Apache Roller project needs your help. This blog entry explains why Roller needs your help and how you can help. [Read More]

Alfonso Romero's new book Apache Roller 4.0 Beginners Guide is now available and it looks like a great resource for Roller beginners and even for more experienced users who want a step-by-step guide to customizing their Roller blog.

Here's the cover:

<img src="http://rollerweblogger.org/project/mediaresource/b32e1401-5ada-4d39-84de-2c8482358f87" alt="Roller book cover" align="center" />

And here's a blurb from the publisher's site:

Apache Roller enables you to build a fully-featured, multi-user blog server apt for all kinds of blogging sites. It is an ideal tool to create your own blogging network with unlimited users and blogs, forums, photo galleries, and more! While it is exciting to have a list of interesting features it can offer you, it might be a little difficult to get started with it by your self.

This book will teach you how to get started with Apache Roller and make the most of all its features using step-by-step, detailed instructions. You will learn how to establish your internet presence with an Apache Roller blog and use the latest web tools to enhance your posts and attract visitors. You will also learn how to promote your blog on popular social bookmarking services and customize it to suit your need.

There's also a very nice except of the book available online:

Working with Templates in Apache Roller 4.0

You can read more on the book's homepage at Pakt Publishing.

One more thing before I close out this entry: Big congratulations to Alfonso and thanks for helping beginning Roller users everywhere!

Want to learn about the new features coming in Roller 5.0? Come to ApacheCon US 2009 in Oakland, California this November and find out.

If you've been to an ApacheCon, then you know what a great experience the conference can be. If not, well then this is the perfect opportunity to join that experience. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the ASF, we're planning a conference like no other. FREE events include a 2-day BarCamp and Hackathon, and evening MeetUps.

Dave Johnson will be attending the conference and giving a talk on on Roller 5.0. Here are the details:

• Title: What's new in Roller 5.0
• Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2009
• Time: 4PM Pacific Time

Abstract: We'll cover the features of Apache Roller 5.0 (to be released Summer 2009 Fall 2009) and how it compares to other blog server options, typical deployment architectures and examples of Roller sites in production today. Ongoing student-driven work on OpenID and better Media Blogging support will be disucssed in detail. And, you'll learn how blog software is changing and adapting to incorporate Social Networking features such as profiles, friend relationships and social gadgets and how you can use Apache Shindig and Project SocialSite to add these features to Roller.

You can register for ApacheCon US 2009 via the link below.

Register for ApacheCon US 2009

Ganesh Mathrubootham has been doing great work on the Media Blogging for Roller project and helping out in other ways in Roller development and support. So in January we nominated and voted him in as Roller's newest committer. Welcome Ganesh, we're very happy to have you on the team.

It's been over a year since our last Roller release and we've fixed a couple dozen bugs in that time including an XSS vulnerability reported recently by Secunia.com. Now those fixes are available as an official Roller release, 4.0.1

• Bugs fixed are listed in the JIRA Issue Tracker Release Notes page
• Updated files and docs are available via the Apache download mirror network

This is a bug-fix only release with no new features.

It was a pretty quiet fall for Roller, as you can see in the November 2008 Board Report, but two San Jose State Univ. students have made great progress on a detailed proposal for Media Blogging in Roller, a set of new features that makes it easy to upload images, video and audio files, to manage those files and to include them in blog posts and feeds.

The Apache Roller project's latest report to the ASF board is available here: August 2008 Board Report. Highlights include some commentary about community health, OpenID support via the Google Summer of Code and a new project to improve Roller's Media Blogging facilities.