RubyConf: John Long: Radiant CMS

Nick Sieger — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 02:54:00 +0000

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.)

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!