Re: [Pyblosxom-devel] Stepping up as maintainer

[Marius G. <ma...@ge...>]

Hello!

On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 09:23:58PM +0300, Akai wrote:
> I've stepped up as maintainer of pyblosxom and I'd like to know a little 
> bit about what both I and we as a team can do to make the project better.
> I know there are a lot of blog engines out there so I'd like an idea of 
> what attracts you to using pyblosxom specifically, so I can make sure to 
> keep the best parts of what led you here, while continually making 
> things better.

I wanted a blog that

  * was written in Python, in case I had to customize it (which I had to
    do a lot)
  * was easy to install (sudo apt-get install pyblosxom)
  * would let me edit blog posts using vim and keep them in a version
    control system (Subversion at the time, which was 2004)
  * would let me preview the blog posts on my laptop (even offline), and
    then publish them using the aforementioned version control system
    (svn post-commit hook that did an svn update on the web server)
  * would take care of the little details like formatting a valid
    RSS/JSON feed

My preferences have changed slightly, and if I were looking for a blog
today, I'd look for something that

  * had all of the above (although virtualenv + pip install something
    would be fine, I wouldn't insist on apt-get install'ing stuff from
    Ubuntu's repos any more; also I'd prefer git instead of Subversion)
  * worked a bit better out of the box (archives, tags, comments, pretty
    styles -- I had to waste too much time digging through various
    plugins trying to figure out what they did, how they did it, and
    then tweak the code/write my own plugins half of the time)
  * worked like a static blog compiler, integrating with Disqus for
    comments (AFAIU pyblosxom can already do that)

The one thing that would most improve the experience of new Pyblosxom
users would be a nice documentation site (built with Sphinx and hosted on
Read The Docs, perhaps).  And maybe a cookbook with recipes for the most
common needs of blog users, like:

  * how can I have tags instead of exclusive categories for my posts?
    with a nice tag cloud or something?
  * how can I enable comments on my blog?  what about spam filtering?
  * where can I find pretty themes?
  * what about a mobile skin?
  * yearly archives?
  * URLs that include year/month/day/blog-title.html?
  * paging?
  * next/previous post links on each individual post page?
  * dynamic archive tree on the sidebar a la blogger?
  * search box?
  * "read more after the split" for very long posts?

I'm sorry about the lack of coherency for the latter part of the list;
I'm a bit tired.

I've some of these suggestions implemented on my blog.  You can take a
look at my plugins in this svn repository mirrored as a Bazaar
repository on Launchpad: https://code.launchpad.net/~mgedmin/+junk/blog

I've never found the time to clean up any of my plugin patches (or just
merge them with the latest pyblosxom git and see if they work),
unfortunately, and I don't see myself finding extra spare time at any
time in the near future :(

> I'd also like to know what versions you guys are using (and how many 
> people are using the latest version off GIT) so I can get a general idea 
> of how often changes should be made into an actual release.

I currently use whatever is in the latest Ubuntu LTS.  Or the one
version before the latest, actually, at the moment.  Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
has pyblosxom 1.4.3-1.  Actually, 12.04 LTS has the same version.

> Also, since Will is retiring the site, we have moved to github (the site 
> part will be up soon). As such, bugs and issues should be submitted 
> here: https://github.com/pyblosxom/pyblosxom

I'm very excited about the Github move and the promise of increased
activity.

Marius Gedminas
-- 
Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of
watching television.
                -- Cal Keegan