Blogging Roller

As I promised at the start of the week, I've put together an easy to install "early access" build of Roller 2.0. The build is a standalone bundle that includes pre-configured Tomcat app server, HSQL-DB database and Roller packages. You should be able to get up and running by simply unzipping the package and running the startup script.

You can get the build here: roller20ea-demo.tar.gz

The purpose of this release is 1) to get feedback on the new Roller UI and group blogging features and 2) to allow folks to help out with testing. If you have feedback on the UI and new features, subscribe to the Roller user/dev list and discuss them with the Roller team. If you encounter bugs, please report them to Roller's JIRA issue tracker.

Here is the README that is included in the build:

ROLLER 2.0 EA DEMO RELEASE

This is a totally unofficial demo and test release of the Roller blog server 
software. Roller is currently in the incubator at Apache, but this release is
not sanctioned, approved or supported by Apache Software Foundation in any way.

If you have problems with this release, please contact Dave Johnson at 
(davidm.johnson at sun.com) and/or report bugs to Roller's JIRA issue tracking 
database at the following URL:

   [http://opensource2.atlassian.com/projects/roller]


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

1. Download roller20ea-demo.tar.gz from Java.Net

2. Unzip the file into a directory on your hard-drive 
   (directory name should have no spaces)

3. Ensure that the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to point to your JDK

4. Ensure that CATALINA_HOME and CATALINA_HOME are NOT set in your environment

5. To start Roller, either:
- on Windows: open the Roller bin directory and double-click on startup.bat 
- on UNIX: cd to the Roller bin directory, chmod +x on all files, run ./startup.sh

6. Point your browser at http://localhost:8080/roller

7. Login as admin/admin, otto/otto or register as a new user

8. Get rollin'

BTW, I built the demo on my Solaris 10 box and tested it on Mac OS X 10.3.9 and Windows XP SP2.