Blogging Roller

Jeff Duska suggests the following for Roller:

* a much better editor. The current edit is too simple.
* How do you change your password?
* A way to upload templates 

We do need a better editor, even if it is only for IE. Maybe Russell Beattie will write a nice editor applet that we can use. Currently, there is no way for a user to change his/her password. And currently, the only ways to upload templates are by cut-and-pasting into Roller.

Jeff: If you use the Roller $macros.showEntryPermalink() in your day template, you'll get a permalink for each weblog entry.

I was hoping to release Roller 0.9.5 tonight, but there were some distractions. My little two month old decided that he was not going to take a bottle tonight while Mom is out. Unfortunately, the only way he could tell me this was by emitting incredibly loud and high pitched screams during the whole bottle session, falling asleep for 15 mintues, and then repeating the process. With the help of some special equipment (earplugs) and after three failed attempts I was finally able to convince little Leo to drink his bottle. These unexpected technical issues can really impact software development timelines.

Matt Raible describes how to create a private password-protected weblog in Roller [Raible Designs]

Blogging Roller is now running on Roller 0.9.5-alpha thanks to a nice little 0.9.4 to 0.9.5 database migration script written by Lance Lavandowska. In other news: Lance just committed in his first cut of file upload for Roller. This new feature should make it easier to upload images for use in Roller weblog entries.

I wonder when that RSS feed repair-man is going to show up? Blogging Roller has been "awaiting repair" for quite some time. Hmm... maybe I ought to fix it myself. Apparently, I only need to add a polling element.

Lance Lavandowska and Simon Stewart have been working on making Roller compatible with PostgreSQL and HSQL-DB. Their changes are now in Roller's CVS, Roller now works with those databases, and the Roller build process now generates database create scripts for PostgreSQL, HSQL-DB, and MySQL databases. Thanks guys! I think we are just about ready for Roller 0.9.5.

Anthony Eden has some thoughts on Roller improvements. Most of his suggestions should be added to the Roller roadmap.

Also, Ovidiu Predescu recently wrote up a wishlist for a weblog tool which should be considered as well.

Looking at the list of Roller users on Anthony Eden's Roller-based site, you can see that XDoclet, WebWork, and JBoss guru Rickard Öberg has a Roller-based blog. Coolio!

Matt is finding that the current release of Xdoclet can't handle the new Struts 1.1-beta features. Since we are trying to use some of those cool new features, Roller will probably be riding on Struts nightlies and XDoclet CVS builds for a while.

Matt also tracked down some mailing-list emails that indicate that both Struts 1.1 and the next release of XDoclet should be coming in the next month or so.

Matt Raible is on a mission to make Roller XHTML and CSS compliant. He has already gotten far enough to make his own weblog XHTML compliant and is now turning his attention to the Editor GUI. I'm enjoying this as an educational experience. Soon, I'll know enough to fix the Blogging Roller template, I don't think it even certifies as HTML.

Craig McClanahan explains why the database-pooling jars are needed on the Tomcat common/lib classpath and can't be packaged in the Roller WAR file. He also suggests a possible work-around.

I found Russell's NoteBook via my referrers. His blog is powered by MiniBlog - which I'm guessing he wrote himself (?). It's a fairly full features blog application written in a single JSP file. It's not going to win any architecture prizes (an 800 line, single file JSP?) but it's cool none-the-less. Mike comments on Russell Beattie's MiniBlog

If you want a server-side Java-based blogger and you think Roller is over-architected and bloated, try MiniBlog. It is pretty amazing (and a little scary) what you can do with one JSP file.

Anthony Eden of JPublish fame has gotten past the Roller install difficulties and now has a Roller based weblog called All Things Java. Update: I should have mentioned that Anthony is offering free Roller accounts at his site. He is a brave and generous man ;-)

LW James also has a Roller based blog and it is starting to show up in my referrer logs. That makes 4 Roller based bloggers including my own.

Matt and Lance have already been contributing Roller patches, diffs, and good ideas faster than I can process them. Now they have both agreed to join the Roller project. Thanks guys and welcome aboard.

I've spotted several Roller based weblogs in the wild, but I'm not sure I should publish links here because they all look a little experimental. UPDATE: Matt Raible has gone live with three Roller-based sites. Very cool. Take a look at the slick new theme and theme switcher he has designed. Nice work Matt.

Last year during my family's vacation to Ocracoke, I wrote the first draft of the Roller article. There is not a whole lot to do on Ocracoke Island (which is exactly what I like in a vacation) and I had a lot of time during "quiet time" and in the evenings after the kids had gone to sleep. This year, we vacationed at Folly Beach outside of Charleston. We had vistors during most of our vacation, and we made several trips to Charleston.  So I had enough time to read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again, but no time for Roller development.

I took a laptop along with me on vacation and I'm glad that I did. Roller mailing-list activity really picked up during the week. In addition to the usual installation questions, several folks are getting serious about contributing to Roller development. Matt Raible contributed an XHTML/CSS based theme for Roller and some new Velocity directives for theme support. Bala Murali is studying the Roller architecture and is very interested in building an "enterprise aggregator" based on and integrated into Roller. JSP expert Lance Lavandowska has also expressed interest in helping out with development - once he untangles the crazy (and quite possibly too complex) Xdoclet web that I have woven.  I'm hoping all these eyes on the code and going to lead to some real improvements in the Roller code base and architecture.  I'm also hoping that some of these smart people are going to become Roller committers in the next month or so.

Dave is much, much smarter than me - a fact that will hit you over the head if you read this article he wrote on Roller for O'Reilly's OnJava.  Dave also sent along a link to another Java-based blogging app called CocoBlog (programmed by Ugo Cei)

Yes: I am incredibly intelligent, good looking, and also very modest  ;-)

After dragging the baby tent, two beach umbrellas, two chairs, and a screaming 4 year old back from a morning in the surf, I took a break from "vacation" to check my email. Jeff Duska sent me an email saying FYI, Blogging Roller is down (thanks Jeff).

I had a copy of Putty with me so I logged in to Kattare and started poking around. Everything looked fine and I could not figure out what could possibly be wrong. After looking at some impossible error messages, I deleted the Tomcat working directories. That fixed everything. I'm sure a Tomcat bug is behind this problem, but I haven't the time/motivation to figure it out now. Back to the beach.

I'm still working on bookmark import and related Roller enhancements. I'm almost done, but I probably won't be making a release in the next week because I'll be on vacation.

Today, I upgraded to Ant 1.5, Velocity 1.3, and Struts 1.1b1. Everything went smoothly, but I found that the Jakarta Commons jars that came with the Struts 1.1b1 release caused problems with Tomcat connection pooling. I don't have time to investigate this now, so I'm sticking with the old commons jars (which the Roller install places in $CATALINA_HOME/common/lib) for the time being. There are a lot of new jars, so be prepared for a big download if you do a CVS update.