Hotaru CMS Forums - Blogs

New Custom Usergroups Feature

Nick — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:07:59 GMT

Hotaru CMS uses both roles and permissions to help site admins micro-manage their users.

The default usergroups are Admin, Supermod, Moderator, Member, Undermod, Pending, Suspended, Banned, Killspammed and Unregistered. Plugins assign permissions to each usergroup, and you can edit them for individual users or entire usergroups.

That alone is pretty awesome, but the next version of Hotaru, coupled with User Manager, will add another level of user domination thanks to my latest experiment, custom usergroups.

The custom usergroups feature is nothing special to look at, but under the hood, it's a mighty powerful tool. To use it, you would go to the Edit Default Permissions page of User Manager and click "Manage custom usergroups...". A drop-down box will give you two choices: "Create new usergroup" or "Remove custom usergroup", as shown below:

When you create a new usergroup, you can choose a default user role to base the initial permissions on. When you want to delete a custom usergroup, you can choose which role to assign to users in the group you're deleting. Any users assigned to an existing group automatically adopt the permissions of the group they are joining.

Custom usergroups open up all manner of possibilities. You could create a team of mini-moderators, a watchlist of problem users, a group of paying members with special privileges, etc, etc...

Of course, to get the most out of custom user groups, I suggest you pick up a PHP for Absolute Beginners book, read the Hotaru documentation, follow the plugin case studies and learn how to add permissions to your own custom plugins. Be the master of your own website! ;)

Hotaru 1.4 Progress Update

Nick — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:51:39 GMT

Just a brief post today to say that work continues on Hotaru 1.4 and a beta will be made available soon for testing.

The most significant changes are deep in the core code where shibuya246 has made some fantastic progress on a multi-site feature that will enable admins to run multiple Hotaru sites from a single installation. While the bulk of the coding has been completed in 1.4, it's unlikely the "Multi-Site Manager" plugin will be released until later to give us ample time to test the system with live 1.4 sites.

One cosmetic change in Hotaru 1.4 is a new default theme. Lately I've been using 960.gs a lot, so I decided to convert the default theme from YUI to 960, and change its appearance so it looks much more like the social bookmarking demo than the drab, gray theme we've suffered since last year.

One small feature in Hotaru 1.4 which should appeal to theme designers is the ability to specify the "fall-back" theme. Currently, if Hotaru is looking for a template and can't find it in your theme, it falls back on the templates in the default theme. In 1.4, you can create your own "base" theme and use it as the fall back for all your custom themes.

Why would you want to do this? Imagine you want to sell a range of Hotaru premium themes. Instead of making separate themes and duplicating the same code in each one, you could just put all the common files in your base theme and let your other themes use them. The base theme might include your favorite category bar, tabbed sidebar boxes, ad spaces, CSS fixes for plugins, and all the other juicy stuff. Your main themes would merely be "skins" that give your base theme a unique look. As long as the end user has your base theme uploaded, they can use any of your other themes.

The image below shows my "NR Base" theme on the left, and its extension, "Luciola Red" on the right.

Expect a beta thread to open in the next week or two for Hotaru 1.4.

New Hotaru Demos Page

Nick — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 05:45:35 GMT

This quote, courtesy of scam site W3Rocks, is unfortunately quite common:

Hotaru CMS is an open source social bookmarking platform written in PHP. It's just another open source Digg clone, similar to Pligg.

And how about this confused one from Celeb Web News?

HotaruCMS is another content management script serves news submitting and acts just like Digg. Hotaru CMS is a Digg clone script supported with themes and plugin. In short, Hotaru CMS is also known to be Pligg�s fork.

If you remember a couple of months back, I was very keen to make Hotaru plugins more independent of each other so they could be used in websites other than just social bookmarking.

Lately, I've been working on some demo sites to show that Hotaru is not just a social bookmarking script, but a flexible content management system.

There are three main demos so far: Social Bookmarking, Magazine and Journals, with the home page used as an example of a Static site. Go take a look:

http://hotarucms.org/demos/

We all know about Social Bookmarking, but I like the Journals demo a lot because it shows Hotaru being used for something completely different, kind of a group blogging site. Of course, Journals can be used as a sub-section of other sites, too.

Magazine on the other hand is a straight swap for the Bookmarking plugin. The demo is put together with these (forthcoming) plugins:

Magazine - a stripped down Bookmarking plugin, i.e. no filters (Latest, Upcoming, Best of..., etc.).
Image Upload - a new plugin (coming soon) for uploading and attaching a photo to each post.
Tim Thumb - a new plugin to create thumbnails for uploaded images.
Author Select - handy if people send you articles via email which you (as the admin) submit on their behalf.
Random Avatars - shows random avatars on each page. Great for automated or demo sites.

Article submission is done with the Submit plugin combined with the Submit No Links plugin.

Hopefully I'll be able to add more sites like these to show Hotaru's flexibility in the future. Funnily enough, epoch is already brainstorming the possibilities here.

A Year After Coding Began

Nick — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:30:01 GMT

We've passed a couple of noteworthy milestones this week which I thought I'd highlight.

June 18th marked one year since work began on Hotaru CMS. I was talking with Alan (shibuya) about whether this means Hotaru is one-year old, and we both agreed that it isn't - that would be a year after Hotaru was first released, not when coding started. Even still, I'm very happy that development hasn't slowed down one bit in the last 12 months.

In fact, June 23rd saw the 2,000th commit to our SVN repository on Assembla. Two thousand commits in a single year shows just how busy we've been. To make a comparison with other CMSs, Wordpress has made 15,000 commits, Elgg has made over 6,500, and Pligg has 2,023. While it's the content of each code revision that really matters, I do think this proves our dedication to the platform.

Currently, we are working away on Hotaru 1.4, laying the foundation for creating and managing multiple sites from a single Hotaru installation so there's plenty to look forward to and it's only been four months since our first public release!

BloggerTools is Running Hotaru 1.3

Nick — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:11:20 GMT

Today I upgraded our demo site at BloggerTools.net to the latest beta version of Hotaru 1.3.

The main areas we're working on are installation, speed and plugin independence. Believe it or not, but BloggerTools no longer uses SB Base! :eek:

Here are the listed goals for this milestone:

CORE
- Implement smartLoader [Done]
- Apply smartCache to Comment class methods [Done]
- Add additional indexes to database tables [Done]
- Reworked install/upgrade script [Done]
- Fixes for setHome, Widgets and IncludeOnce [Done]
- Implement plugin update notification [I think Done]
- Rework plugin hook checks with an array instead of cached DB queries [Done]
- Shorten getUserBasic by moving user settings and permissions into a getUser function [Done]
- Improve use of caching and queries on the Plugin Management page [Done]
- Experimental work for multi-site potential [in progress]

PLUGINS
- Remove overly-strict dependencies on other plugins [Done for some]
- Breakup SB Base into 3 smaller plugins: Bookmarking, Post RSS and Archive [Done]
- Update *all* plugins for above change. Specifically: [DONE ALL]
* Change all sb_base_theme_index_top functions into theme_index_top
* Remove "Requires: sb_base" or replace with "Requires: bookmarking 0.1"
* Remove "sb_base_" from all pluginHook("sb_base_ etc") lines
* Replace "sb_base" language items with "bookmarking"
- Update all plugins that call getUserBasic to use getUser if settings and permissions are necessary [I think Done]

I wish I could say the upgrade will be easy, but I'm afraid the removal of SB Base means some template and language updates will be needed, and a lot of plugin upgrades. I've already updated dozens of plugins including all the plugin pack ones and still have more to do. I'm sure I'll miss a few so let me know if you use any obscure ones.

We hope to make a beta version available next week for testing. Feel free to ask any questions.

Plugin Order and Independence

Nick — Sat, 22 May 2010 16:35:45 GMT

I often say in the forums that the plugin order is important for everything to run smoothly, but this isn't entirely true anymore. A few versions ago, each plugin ran a function at the theme_index_top plugin hook, like this:

If a User page, show user posts,
If a Category page show category posts,
If a Tags page, show tag posts,
If a Search page, show search results,
Etc.

Nice and logical, right?

Wrong. The problem was that even though we knew the page name, we didn't know whether to show popular, upcoming or latest posts unless the SB Base plugin had run first. Often, you'd have to juggle the order of plugins until you got it working. The solution at the time was to change all those plugins to use a new hook: sb_base_theme_index_top which was put in SB Base itself, forcing them to run after SB Base has determined the kind of posts page.

Clever, eh?

No, not really, because that led all the plugins to require SB Base.... which is where we are at with Hotaru 1.2.

This evening, I've been going through some of the main plugins, removing all references to SB Base so that they can be used for other kinds of websites, too, not only social bookmarking. But doing this without reviving the old plugin order puzzles has again been tricky.

For my current test site, I've removed SB Base completely, but divided its functions over three plugins: Bookmarking, Post RSS and Archive. The solution I've come up with to the above problem is quite elegant, with just a touch of hackiness:

PHP Code:

/** * theme_index_top */ public function theme_index_top($h) { // check if this is for popular, upcoming, latest posts or other... $this->determinePage($h); // run all other theme_index_top functions except this one... $h->pluginHook('theme_index_top', '', array(), array('bookmarking')); // we've now checked all the other plugins and know what to do, so... $this->finalizePage($h); // don't run anymore "theme_index_top" functions... return "skip"; }

The Bookmarking plugin has to run first, but the order of other plugins shouldn't matter. First, we determine whether the page is for popular, upcoming or latest posts, and then we duplicate the theme_index_top hook, excluding the current plugin to avoid an infinite loop. Once all the other plugins have run their functions at that hook, we can then continue setting up the page in full knowledge of what the other plugins are trying to do. Finally, I've added the ability to return "skip", which will prevent the first theme_index_top calling all the plugins for a second time.

I need to do a lot more testing, but I think this is the key for successful communication between plugins and the "base" plugin, without tying them all up together.

A Few Thoughts About Hotaru's Direction...

Nick — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:56:05 GMT

With my recent change in the forum, pushing threads into a dedicated "social bookmarking" section, you can probably tell that I'm keen to break out of the social bookmarking mold and into other areas.

When I started building Hotaru almost a year ago, I wanted to...
1. Make it open ended, not limited to social bookmarking like our predecessor (Social Web CMS)
2. Make a set of social bookmarking plugins to
a) demonstrate the plugin system
b) allow SWCMS users (including myself) to continue our sites

What I didn't intend was for Hotaru to be considered a social bookmarking platform, because it isn't. But how do you explain that to people looking for a quick alternative to Pligg, who are frustrated when social bookmarking components aren't already enabled by default, and the documentation doesn't explain the ins and outs of bookmarking-specific plugins?

It seems after making dozens of plugins to show what Hotaru can do, the next logical step is to make dozens of plugins to show what else it can do! :rolleyes:

Initially, I'd like to go through some of the main plugins and make them less dependent on each other, and more generic for use in other kinds of sites. That seems to be the way to go, and will help broaden our appeal somewhat.

Nearly There...

Nick — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:50:20 GMT

You'll see we've updated a lot of plugins ready for Hotaru 1.2. Just that alone was a gargantuan task, taking most of the evening. In the morning, we'll tidy up a few more loose ends and get the new core package out for you to download.

Thanks for your patience! :)

Behind The Scenes Look At Hotaru 1.2

Nick — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:02:42 GMT

The next version of Hotaru is most likely going to be 1.2, and will be a slightly bigger update than the last few. Rather than get your hopes up with features that may or may not be included, I'll tell you what is already done:

Database class

We've got a new class for database functions. It sits on top of ezSQL and simplifies data retrieval. It's used like this:

PHP Code:

$results = $h->db->select($h, $select, $table, $where, $orderby, $limit);

So if you wanted to get the top 10 posts of all time, you'd do:

PHP Code:

$select = array('*'); $table = 'posts'; $where = array( 'post_archived = %s' => 'N', 'post_type = %s' => 'news', 'post_status = %s' => 'top'); $order_by = 'post_votes_up DESC'; $limit = '10'; $results = $h->db->select($h, array('*'), $table, $where, $orderby, $limit);

Alternatively, you can fill the $h->db object like this:

PHP Code:

$h->db->select = array('*'); $h->db->table = 'posts'; $h->db->where = array( 'post_archived = %s' => 'N', 'post_type = %s' => 'news', 'post_status = %s' => 'top'); $h->db->order_by = 'post_votes_up DESC'; $h->db->limit = '10'; $results = $h->db->select($h);

And for good measure, the Database class uses Hotaru's smartCache() on the results. :cool:

Widget changes

Until now, if you wanted to display a single widget, you'd have to put it in a widget block. While that is all well and good, things can get confusing if you have multiple widget blocks, especially if you're a theme designer and want to make an "out of the box" theme that doesn't need the user to move widgets into the correct widget blocks.

So, from Hotaru 1.2, you'll be able to do this:

PHP Code:

::singleWidget($h, "rss_show_1"); ?>

That might still change a bit, but you get the idea.

Home page changes

For me, the most exciting change in Hotaru 1.2 is the ability to pick a home page template. Currently, the Top Stories from SB Base show on the home page, but if you want to show a custom template, maybe a splash page or magazine style page full of widgets, you just have to add this at the top of your index.php file:

PHP Code:

$h->setHome('template_name');

SB Base will detect that an alternative home page is set and move itself to a "popular" page and add a "Top Posts" link to the navigation bar.

When?

Not just yet. Probably in May. There are some extra goodies that need to be included first ;) .

Hotaru CMS Featured on Assembla.com

Nick — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:22:32 GMT

I was thrilled recently when Assembla.com chose Hotaru CMS as their "Featured Project".

Assembla is where we host Hotaru's code, organize tickets and determine milestones. I first used Assembla when I joined Social Web CMS back in 2008, and had no qualms about setting up an Assembla space for Hotaru, too. Recently, Sergio and the team have made a number of improvements to the service, including community support and promotion of open source projects such as ours.

Cool stuff, eh? Not only that, but Assembla made a blog post about Hotaru CMS, which my mum kindly commented on! :o

If you're interested in hosting your own project with Assembla, they've got both free and paid plans, but even better than that, they're a great bunch of lads! Don't believe me? Send them a tweet! :D

My experience so far

ties — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:44:07 GMT

Hey,

A little longer than a month ago i joined these forums after fooling around for a bit. I started out making a theme (newspaper) but then there was this autocomplete plugin request.
So i just started building with my home taught php and got really close, i just need to fix some bugs.

When working on the plugin i started to become really exited aobut hotaru, and started (trying to) helping out people and with some success. Then i builded the mobile plugin and the nightlight theme which both contain some bugs, but i simply havent got any time to get to it... fixing bugs is the boring part, i found that out aswell

Then Nick asked me to join the team and i (of course) i was honored and happy to join, so here i am now member of the team. But i'll be focussing on making plugins and themes (on request) when i have time, at least for the near future. No one knows what the future will bring.

To be honest i had no clue what social bookmarking was and was just looking for a cms which was easily extendible to my needs. But by the time i finally was capable, i was already an active communitymember and the personal project is postponed... funny how things go.

I dont think im made for blogging, but why dont give it a try.

hope to see you in the forums
Ties

A Reddit Clone Built on Hotaru CMS

Nick — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:22:08 GMT

The latest theme in the Theme Downloads forum is a clone of Reddit, called Yonda.

What better way to show off Hotaru than with a theme that emulates one of the biggest social bookmarking sites on the net? I must admit I'm very impressed, and happy to see our Up Down Voting plugin getting put to good use! :cool:

Although it looks just like Reddit, this theme has been skillfully crafted by hand by Mabujo Web Designs. It turns out that the designer, mabujo, is no stranger to social bookmarking. He's been running a successful football site on Social Web CMS since 2008, and has half a dozen other projects based on Pligg. In his recent blog post "Experimenting with Hotaru", he says:

Hotaru is a new project similar to pligg and swcms, but has been built from the ground up as a modular system with strong code guidelines. It�s just up my street and I have been keeping my eye on the project for the last few months with the hopes of migrating my sites to the platform.

Welcome to Hotaru, mabujo! We hope you like it here. :)

Firing On All Cylinders - Hotaru 1.1.3

Nick — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:06:39 GMT

It's been a full day here at Hotaru Central. Here's what's going on behind the scenes:

While Shibuya246 is sitting in his home office in the heart of Tokyo, I'm at my desk in my country home at the foot of the Japan Alps. Together we are connected via Skype and sharing our screens so we can go through each other's code.

We have a shared checklist of things to get done by Sunday night our time, and we're knocking them off one-by-one. In the last 24 hours, we've finished a new feature in Maintenance to generate a system report. This will help tremendously in identifying problems. That report and all error logs are now only accessible to users with admin access and they delete themselves if they grow to big.

The Cron plugin is done, and its first task will be to check for new Hotaru versions and update you of their availability in your Admin CP. We've also been testing SMTP email authentication extensively and are satisfied it works for all the emails Hotaru sends out. We've even made changes to enable users to easily override all or part of the language used in Admin, something that will open the door for the first language packs.

The plugin that you're all waiting for, "AutoReader", is getting closer and closer to completion. This is a very powerful plugin that enables you to create multiple RSS import campaigns for different users so you can automatically fill your site with content. This is currently Shibuya246's highest priority and he's busy squashing last minute bugs. hoping to release the first version along with Hotaru 1.1.3.

Another very cool feature which is not too far from completion is "Social Bar", an external link bar, much like that used by Digg. This is one that I can't wait to use on my own site, so stay tuned for that!

Please, please, please, please, please follow us on Twitter, Facebook and help us get the word out about Hotaru. The more people that get involved, the faster it will grow and the more features you will get. Oh, and if you see a post in the forums that you can help with, please take a moment to help out your fellow users.

Cheers!
Nick.

Adding to the User Manager

Nick — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:19:29 GMT

I'm currently adding a new page to the User Manager plugin which does three essential things that have so far been lacking in Hotaru. The admin will be able to...

1. create new users
2. send a user a new password
3. re-send an email validation email

The first one is done. You simply provide a user name and email and hit "Add New User". Hotaru will generate a random password and send it in an email to the new user.

The other two are pretty easy and I'll tackle those tomorrow.

Tutorial Addict is live! Come get your fix

rushnp774 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:25:56 GMT

.
For all those who crave the latest Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and other Adobe software tutorials, my Hotaru CMS site, Tutorial Addict, is now live! Please come get your fix. There are about 15 pieces of Adobe software covered now, but I'd love to eventually expand to their whole lineup (I can dream big, can't I?). I want to make Tutorial Addict THE place to go to share and promote the best Adobe tutorials on the Internet.

After several months of testing, helping write plugins, constantly updating plugins due to Nick's rapid development pace (:cool:), and getting to know the other great members of the forum, I'm presenting the site in beta form. I still need a designer to make me a theme, and I definitely will try some more things out, but it's stable enough to release.

I welcome you all to join the site, submit your own tutorials to the site, and encourage you to do so. Any and all activity, bug discoveries, and site suggestions are warmly welcome. Feel free to get your fix in the following ways:

- Twitter
- Facebook
- FriendFeed
- Email
- RSS

Thanks to the Hotaru team, and enjoy your kohii Nick!

Kyle
Tutorial Addict

P.S. The site looks WAY better in FireFox. Trust me, I'll get a cross-browser compliant theme soon enough. PM me if you'd like to be paid to make one.