Nick Sieger

RubyConf: John Long: Radiant CMS

Posted by Nick Sieger Sat, 21 Oct 2006 02:54:00 GMT

What is Radiant?

• No-fluff, lightweight CMS for small teams
• Simplicity over features
• A little more than a blogging engine
• Made for designers and programmers (techies)
• Tag-based template language
• Total control over output
• Plugin extension mechanism under development
• Content sites, not portal software

Getting Started

• Install: gem install radiant
• Generate a new application: mkdir demo && cd demo && radiant .
• Configure database: cp config/database.sqlite.yml config/database.yml

Installation types

• Instance mode vs. application mode (whether or not you have Rails source present). Instance mode also makes it possible to clone and share customize Radiant applications.
• Base application includes an admin interface

Pages, Snippets and Layouts

• Hierarchical page management
• Create page in several states (draft, reviewed, published) in Textile or Markdown with slug, breadcrumb, and layout
• Snippets are small chunks of content that can be shared between pages (to DRY up your content)
• Layouts that can be broken down into components of the layout (sidebar, etc.)

Tags

• Radius
• <r:title/>, <r:content part="sidebar" inherit="true"/>, <r:snippet name="footer"/>, <r:if_content part="extended">...</r:if_content>, <r:children:each limit="5" order="desc">...</r:children:each>
• Tags can be embedded anywhere, not just in the layout
• Tags are contextual -- e.g., <r:title/> picks the correct title even if it is embedded within a snippet within multiple pages
• Custom tags possible with “behavior”

Text Filters

• Textile (RedCloth), Markdown (BlueCloth), SmartyPants
• Vanilla HTML (no filtering)
• Custom filters possible. [This is my own example below, not John’s.]

      class MyFilter < TextFilter::Base
    register 'profanity filter'
    def filter(txt)
      txt.gsub(/(damn|ass|shit)/i, '####')
    end
  end
  

Radiant is powering the new ruby-lang.org site. Overall, a slick, well-thought out, polished, extendable CMS done very much in the philosophy of Ruby and Rails. Check it out!