Blogging Roller

Planet Roller is a community aggregator, a tool for creating a website that combines related but separately hosted blogs together into one blog with it's own newsfeed. Planet Roller will eventually be part of Roller, but for the upcoming Roller 1.1 release it's in the Roller "sandbox" and will only be available in custom builds. There's also a standalone verion of Planet Roller, which I'll describe below.

Here's some status. I spent most of the week creating the infrastructure needed for configuring and running Planet Roller inside of Roller. That means storing the subscription and group configuration in a database, rather than an XML file. And, it means doing aggregation via a database query rather than spinning through a bunch of hashtables. Once I'm done, we'll have a custom-build of Roller that puts every Roller blog on the system into the aggregator and allows us to add separately blogs into the mix.

Want to try Planet Roller? I've been testing a standalone command-line version of Planet Roller, which I call Planet Tool, by running a site called Triangle Bloggers, which combines a bunch of local blogs in the Raleigh-Durham area. So, one way to try Planet Roller is to visit that site and subscribe to the feed. Triangle Bloggers has been a good testing experience because I've been forced to deal with a wide variety of Atom and RSS feeds. Planet Tool can handle Atom and just about any form of RSS, as long as it has item level publication dates (i.e. must be RSS 0.93 or later).

If you want to try running Planet Tool and creating your own aggregated blog, you can get the tool here: planet-roller-1.1-dev.tar (source is included). If you have Java installed, all you need to do is download it, un-tar it (with tar or Winzip), open a command window, and either run planet-tool.sh or plannet-tool.bat. It reads an XML config file and then generates the HTML and XML files needed for an aggregated blog. To keep your aggregated blog up to date, you'll need to run Planet Tool on a schedule, so run it as a cron job or as a Window Scheduled Task.

For more information on the config file and on page templates see this blog entry:
Rome + Texen = Planet Roller

For more information on how Planet Tool works:
Planet Roller Internals

Though they don't admit it anywhere on their site, Syracuseblog.com is power by Roller.

We the committers and friends of the open source Roller Weblogger project propose that the project become part of the Apache Software Foundation. The rest of this document explains the rationale behind this proposal, how Roller meets the Apache project scope, initial source, resources required, and initial committer criteria. [Read More]

PubSub scoops Technorati and Feedster again, this time with a short review and another request for multi-author blog support in Roller. In part:

Big IDEA: from Zane State College’s IDEA Center: Wow, I’m impressed with Roller. A brief rundown of some of the plusses:

• configurable editor interfaces–plain, WYSIWYG (java, IE-only and Mozilla-only)
• timed availability of comments (enable for n days)
• enable/disable comments (per-post or blog-wide)
• nice blogroll import from OPML
• bookmark import
• create static pages–the link is created for you and added to the main navigation for you blog
• per-user themes
• spell check
• new user registration
• rss: site-wide, per-blog, and per-category

Maybe WordPress MultiUser is really the way to go. I used the regular WP for a class blog previously and liked having the multi-author blog. But I also really like Roller now; maybe the developers will add multi-author blogs soon.

I mentioned some time before that the Italian newspaper la Repubblica.it is using Roller for it's comments-enabled reporter and columnists blogs (for example Estremo Occidente, and see the blogroll for more). They also seem to be running, or at least in affiliation with, a site called Kataweb.it which hosts a bunch of Roller-based blogs including one devoted to reality-TV called Reality Blog.

I put together an experimental Triangle blogs aggregator using the new Planet Tool aggregator. Let me know if you'd like to be added or subtracted from the aggregation. I stole Anton's Blog Together theme. Maybe I can convince him to steal my aggregator.

There is an RSS feed and OPML subscription list for the whole site, and one for each of the groups (Chapel Hill bloggers, RTP bloggers, and TriJUG bloggers).

<img src="http://www.rollerweblogger.org/resources/roller/google-share-02-05.gif" alt="pie chart of blog server market share" />

"Interesting analysis of the market share of the popular blogging tools by Elise Bauer." She used Google to gather the statistics. From Threadwatch.org via Scoble.

Roller Weblogger: Roller 1.0.1 is a bug fix release that also adds support for Google's new rel="nofollow" flag. You can get the release on Roller's Java.Net download space. You can read the change list on Roller's JIRA issue tracking system. And, you can find install instructions and instructions for upgrading your existing Roller 1.0 install to 1.0.1 on the Roller wiki. Happy rolling!

I made a proposal for a Roller 1.1 release today. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions please join us on the Roller-development mailing-list to discuss.

I just wrote up some instructions for configuring Secure Logins for Roller 1.0.

I had to make one minor change in Roller 1.0's Secure Login feature. I found that, when Roller is running behind a web switch, I can't rely on request.isSecure() to tell me if I have an HTTPS connection. I had to add an (optional) request header test. In my case, I have to test for a header named X-SSL to determine if HTTPS is active.

Anil has put together a couple of Roller plugins for Google links and Technorati tags. He has also set up his very own wiki.

CorporateBloggingBlog.info: The blog of European Commissioner Margot Wallström is now a fully enabled blog. We find a feed, (moderated) comments and trackback. There's a calendar, categories and a blog search. Exactly as she promised when it started.

It's nice to see that when the first commissioner decides to try blogging out, she goes the whole way. That in itself, I believe, is a statement of seriousness and authenticity.I also note that the blog has moved. When it started it was found at http://europa.eu.int/comm/commission_barroso/wallstrom/weblog/index.htm. Now we find it at http://weblog.jrc.cec.eu.int/page/wallstrom. Could be an insignificant technical detail. Could also be a sign telling us that the Commission has prepared its infrastructure for more blogs.

Or... it could be a sign that they are blogging with Roller. Congrats to the commissioner and the tech folks behind the blog infrastructure who have submitted a slew of useful bug reports and patches to the Roller project. They really put together a nice theme, don't you think?

Uploaded via Photon, an export plugin for iPhoto (thanks to Dave for pointing it out).

James Todd:a handful of my citizen blog peers have added swag 'chat' links to thier sites:

• Chat with Alan
• Clingan Zone
• Jim's Chat
• GonzoLand

i truly appreciate folks kicking these ideas around. great dialog. great ideas. all grounded in very real world activities. just the way it should be. make it real! further, when i have run into a brick wall, for various reasons, i tend to turn more often or not to those that post here at blogs.sun.com.

Keep an eye on that guy. MyJXTA based blog chat is starting to catch on at blogs.sun.com.

Junkfood has a nice summary of the different levels of Roller customization and the documentation you need to do customization. He writes "Roller is poorly documented" and he's right. I haven't updated the user guide since 0.9.8 and the macro reference, which is auto-generated from tags in the Velocity code just doesn't cut it. I'm working on user and install docs now. Next up are the customization docs.

Here are Junkfood's levels of Roller customization:

1. Edit CSS stylesheets to customize styles.
2. Edit page templates to add/delete/move page elements and Roller macros.
3. Select different theme packages to get different base page templates and CSS stylesheets.
4. Create and use new macros.
5. Override existing Roller macros.
6. Change Roller configuration and installation.
7. Change Apache configuration.
8. Edit Roller source code.

I added nofollow attributes to all links displayed from incoming comments, referrers, and trackbacks to Roller today. This fix and a couple of others will be included in a Roller 1.0.1 release sometime next week.

Finally! Roller 1.0 is available. There will be a slightly more formal announcement on the Roller blog a little later.

• Roller 1.0 downloads
• Roller 1.0 Installation Guide
  
• Report bugs at Roller's JIRA site

If you have problems during install, join the Roller mailing lists or join us in the #roller IRC chat room on Freenode. BTW, I'll be updating the User Guide for 1.0 next week.

Thanks to two very generous contributors, we now have translations of the Roller user guide, installation guide, and FAQ. Take a look:

• Japanese: Noniko translated the User Guide, Installation Guide, and the wiki front page.
• Chinese: Nan Chang translated the  User Guide,  Installation Guide, and FAQ.

Thanks Noniko and Nan Chang. I'm sure your efforts will be appreciated by many new Roller users.

By the way, the Installation Guide is in sync with Roller 1.0, but I still need to update the User Guide to document the new Roller 1.0 features.

Robert Sayre: "Six Apart's recent acquisition of LiveJournal means goodness for Atom format and protocol clients. Together with Blogger, this should push things to critical mass."

True.

Oh, and I forgot to mention Atom Protocol support (ROL-605) in my list of possible post-1.0 Roller features (it is almost complete now, BTW).

Now that we're getting down to the last couple of bugs, it's time to think about what comes after Roller 1.0. I've been reviewing the bug database and making sure all the things folks have been asking for are in there as bugs, new features, or improvements. I've put together a list of the new feature areas that I personally think are most interesting with links into our JIRA issue tracker.

I'm posting this to get feedback from anybody and everybody willing to give it, but this is not a democratic process. My manager will ultimately determine what I work on (since the book eats all of my so called free time) and the other Roller developers will decide what they each want to work on. But we'd all like to hear what you, the Roller users and fans and victims (like Charles at Javablogs.com) have to say. You can respond here, on your blogs, in the issue tracking system (as votes or comments), or on the Roller mailing lists.

Group blogging

Group blogging is a long requested feature. We've always known that eventually, each user would have more than one blog and each blog could have more than one user (ROL-598). We've also discussed the idea of a simple workflow, where only designated "editors" in a group blog can post and regular authors can only save drafts (ROL-599).

Better front page / community area

Better front page and community features are also much requested. We need better ways to explore the blogs on a Roller server, better reports, and some way to browse users. Right now, you can only see who posted recently and the top 40 blogs for the day, based on hit counts (ROL-561). Rick Ross has suggested adding a language field for each weblog entry, so that visitors can switch between the all languages front page to view only French entries, only Spanish, or whatever they prefer (ROL-423). We've also discussed the idea of adding a community aggregator to the front page (ROL-596).

Category improvements

We need to complete support for hierarchical categories (ROL-511) and allow multiple categories per blog entry (ROL-58). Also, to better support new front page views and corporate blogging, we should consider having an option for a shared category tree (ROL-606) instead of allowing each user to have his/her own category scheme.

Better comment management

We've come a long way with comment spam protection in Roller 1.0, but have a ways to go. We have both CAPTCHA and simple math-question comment authenticators, but we could use some others. And we need better ways to manage, edit, and even bulk delete comments (ROL-563).

Better plugin support

We have plugins now -- such as the read-more, wiki, and others -- but they could do so much more. We have discussed a proposal to expand plugin support to allow plugins to add arbitrary metadata to blog entries and to allow plugins to hook into the weblog editor (ROL-601). Such a plugin would make it very easy to add support for Podcasting (ROL-597).

Better URLs and GUIDs

Tim Bray commented on Roller's "lame" perma-links, which need fixing (ROL-594). Also, Roller permalinks include the publication dates which can be changed so they don't really make good GUIDs -- we should fix that as well (ROL-595). We'd better fix those are the same time too, so that Charles at Javablogs.com doesn't have to endure multiple floods of new JRoller and blogs.sun.com entries.

Administrative Improvements

Changes are also needed to help support Roller administrators. For example, a Roller admin should have a super-user capability so that they can view, edit, and delete any blog entry or comment in the system. (ROL-600). To ease the pain of Roller installs, we need a real installer (we've discussed this on mailing list and IRC, but there is no JIRA issue). And poor old bug #9  which calls for a forgot-my-password page, has been ignored for far too long.

That's all I have for you tonight. Now it's your turn. What features do you think Roller needs most?