Nick's Hotaru CMS Blog

In the next couple of days, I'll make Hotaru 0.4 available for download, but before I do so, I thought I'd tease you with some of the new additions since 0.3 last week.

Since Hotaru is a plugin-based system, changes to its core files are driven by the needs of plugins, and there are two new plugins, along with some welcome additions to existing ones.

First of all, and most exciting for me, is the Pligg Importer. I succeeded in importing an old JapanSoc database into Hotaru using it, as you can tell by this screenshot:

The biggest difficulty was dealing with user logins. Passwords are obviously encoded, so I had no choice but to change Hotaru's user registration and authentication functions to match those in Pligg, therefore allowing users to login with their existing username and password.

The JapanSoc database I used is a bit old, but still contains over 3,000 links. Having imported them, I realized I needed to fix some problems with pagination, and at the same time I tarted up the page navigation buttons at the bottom, which I hope you can see above.

Also in the screenshot is a drop-down category menu. Of course, rather than simply drop the category tree that was in the sidebar, I added an admin option to allow you to switch between the category bar or the category tree.

Another addition visible above is avatars. Those are done with a new Gravatar plugin, which suits my needs fine. Should you need some other kind of avatar system, a dedicated plugin could be written and activated instead of Gravatar.

Finally, if you look closely, you'll see an "EDIT" link next to each post. They are visible to admin users and the person who submitted the story. Clicking it will let you edit the post, but admin users can change the status and source url, too.

Ah! I also added breadcrumb navigation at the top of each page, so along with everything else mentioned here, Hotaru is starting to look like a real site!

Keep your eyes peeled in the forums for 0.4 and updated plugins, and check back here for my latest development gossip!