Hotaru CMS 1.3 Released

[Nick]

The pace of development here at Hotaru HQ has been blistering since the release of version 1.2 last month.

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If you're new here and wondering what exactly Hotaru CMS is, think of it as "Wordpress without blogging". If Wordpress didn't do blogging by itself, you'd need plugins to do it for you. And if you had to make plugins, you wouldn't be limited to just blogging. You could make plugins for any kind of site, whether a blog, a social network, an online shop, etc. That's Hotaru CMS, a framework for making websites customized to your needs. As an example, check out the demo. It showcases a Digg clone made with Hotaru plugins.
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Hotaru v.1.3 contains bug fixes, changes and a host of new features since version 1.2.

Download Hotaru CMS 1.3 here

Here are some of the changes since Hotaru 1.2:

Speed Improvements:
- Implementation of smartLoader
- Applied smartCache to Comment class methods
- Added additional indexes to database tables
- Reworked plugin hook checks with an array instead of cached database queries
- Shortened getUserBasic() by moving user settings and permissions into a separate function
- New cache for language files
- More caching in Plugin Management

Install/Upgrade:
- Updated interface
- More error checking
- Checks for an existing installation
- Checks essential PHP modules are installed
- If server permissions allow, then...
- - - You can enter settings via the browser instead of manually editing the settings file
- - - delete the install folder with one click when installation is done

Plugin Notification / Automatic Plugin Updates
- Ability to check if there are newer versions of your plugins available
- If server permissions allow, you can automatically update your plugins

On the plugin front, we've replaced SB Base with three new plugins that do the same thing: Bookmarking, Post RSS and Archive. All plugins have been updated for Hotaru 1.3, and most of them are more independent than before so can be used for non-social bookmarking sites.

Outstanding issues are listed on Assembla here:
http://www.assembla.com/spaces/HotaruCMS/tickets?batch=false&tickets_report_id=1

Thank you to everyone who has reported bugs. Please continue to do so in the How-To and Troubleshooting forum.

[UPGRADE INSTRUCTIONS FOLLOW BELOW]

[Nick]

Hotaru 1.3 is here, and it's a big update.

To ensure a smooth transition from your current site to 1.3, please read the following instructions carefully so you can understand what is involved.

Remember! back up your database and back up your theme folder.

Let's get started...

What's involved?

The main changes involved in upgrading are:
1. Replacing SB Base with Bookmarking, Post RSS and Archive plugins
2. Editing customized files to suit those new plugins and a new cache location.
3. Updating all your other plugins
4. Editing the hotaru_settings.php file

Preparing your plugins

1. Make a note of the plugins you're using (there's a list in your system report - Admin -> Maintenance -> Debug -> Generate a system Report - > open system_report.php).
2. Download Hotaru 1.3
3. Download the updated plugins pack (attached). This is a massive .zip of all the plugins we have, updated for 1.3, so you you can upload the plugins you need (not all of them!). Note: This pack is only up-to-date at the time this post was written.

Preparing your theme

1. Rename any custom "sb_" templates to "bookmarking_"
2. Rename $h->lang["sb_base_blah_blah"] to $h->lang["bookmarking_blah_blah"] in the above templates
3. Remove "sb_base_" from all $h->pluginHook("sb_base_blah_blah") in the above templates so they should look like $h->pluginHook("blah_blah").
4. If you've customized sb_base_language.php, move bookmarking_language.php into your theme's languages folder and copy your edits into the bookmarking language file. You'll notice the archiving and RSS language has been removed. If you edited those, you'll need to make the same changes in archive_language.php or post_rss_language.php.
5. Check all your customized plugin CSS files for (/content or (../../content and change them to (../../../content (it's ugly, but necessary).
6. If you're using the Link Bar or Mobile plugins and have customized templates, please compare your changes with the latest versions and make any necessary edits.

Final preparations before uploading

1. Backup your database
2. Open your /hotaru_settings.php file and delete everything below "Don't edit anything below this point". For reference, look at hotaru_settings_default.

Upgrading

Here are the upgrade steps:

1. Admin -> Maintenance -> Close your site
2. Admin -> Plugin Management -> click "Turn off all plugins"
3. Admin -> Plugin Management -> uninstall SB Base
4. Upload the Hotaru CMS 1.3 files, overwriting existing ones
5. Upload the latest versions of the plugins on your plugin list
6. Go to /install/upgrade.php and follow the instructions
7. Admin -> Plugin Management -> click "Turn on (upgrade) all plugins"
8. Install Bookmarking, Post RSS and optionally Archive, and move Bookmarking to the top of the plugin order. Not required, but I recommend moving Post RSS after Bookmarking.
9. Edit the settings for Bookmarking and Archive to match what you had in SB Base.
10. Admin -> Maintenance -> Open your site

Cleaning Up

1. Admin-> Maintenance -> Plugin Settings - > Remove SB Base settings
2. Admin -> Maintenance -> click "Clear all cache folders"
3. Using FTP, delete everything inside of /cache. This will clear out the old folder structure.

All done? Phew!

[Nick]

reserved ...

[apfind]

Sweet! Thanks so much for all your hard work on this! Can't wait to install it.

[James Stein]

HotaruCMS beats out wordpress but as added security I would add 2 files in the following folders.

/libs/
/contents/
/functions/
/cache/
/javascript/

1st file Create a index.php (text file just name it index.php)

<?php
// This page keeps search engines and unwanted visitors from viewing your private plugin directory contents.

// The following sends an error code to search engine bots so they won't index this page. 
header("HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden");
?>

2nd file Create a robots.txt (text file just name it robots.txt)

User-agent: *

Disallow: *

Both are not really needed, the index.php will do fine but I like to be extra sure so I use both..

Also make sure you DELETE the install folder

James

[netnuvo]

Super can't wait to try it! Upgrading right now.

Will post bugs (if they are any) with french stuff, you know...the people that put ACCENTS (aarrrgrgrghghg) in their text...

Cheers,

Math

[mabujo]

Just managed to get 1.3 running on my testing server and upgraded my theme. Hopefully put it live on the site on Monday.

Looking good so far. Didn't have to change anything in Link Bar and haven't got round to Mobile yet.

Comparable debug on the same server of the 2 versions :

Database queries: 42 | Page load time: 0.9s | Memory usage: 4.38 MB | PHP v.5.2.13 | MySQL v.5.0.90-community | Hotaru CMS v.1.2.0

Database queries: 23 | Page load time: 0.9s | Memory usage: 4.43 MB | PHP v.5.2.13 | MySQL v.5.0.90-community | Hotaru CMS v.1.3.0

So a lot less queries but not much difference in speed as far as I can tell.

[Nick]

@James, good suggestions.

@mabujo, oh well.... maybe it's really 0.99s versus 0.90s ? Glad to hear you've already managed to upgrade your theme.

[mabujo]

oh well.... maybe it's really 0.99s versus 0.90s ? Glad to hear you've already managed to upgrade your theme.

admittedly it is not a scientific observation, hopefully i will be able to give a more detailed response time comparison later on in the week from pingdom...

Got Mobile working, it was a bit trickier than the rest but not too bad.

[mabujo]

Have got 1.3 working on my live site now.

The only error I have found is this in the logs :

[06-Jun-2010 06:40:40] PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in /[...]/public_html/cache/1/lang_cache/language.php on line 2

I must have missed something in the language file I guess?

Edit : Found one other problem, upgrading for me resulted in all cron entries for the autoreader plugin disappearing from the cron plugin. Going into each autoreader campaign and re-saving it seems to restore the job. Default hotaru daily crons were still there.