LightPress

After a few days' work, the merge from my experimental branch is completed and we are releasing the first 1.1.0 unstable. We still have to merge Jerome's development branch, but you can get an idea of the direction we are heading.

The plugin system has undergone major changes, and it will be confusing for most users as it's designed to be manipulated by a WP plugin (activate/deactivate, set options), which is still under development. Some code is still missing before the plugin system for 1.1.0 is complete (some will be borrowed from the new backend), but the current snapshot already offers a new important feature that enables plugins to be tied to the running context (for an example have a look at the constants in config.php and plugins/AboutContext.php).

As usual, you can download 1.1.0-dev from the project filelist, or read its ChangeLog (also copied below for convenience). If you have any questions or need explanations, post a comment here.

This brief HowTo explains how to write your own LightPress plugins. If you follow this tutorial, you will not only be able to write a plugin, but will understand how our plugin system works. (Howto in development, refresh the page to view the latest version).

Following Sencer's suggestion, 1.0.4 adds UTF-8 templates to both kubrick and default. Included with this release is also a copy of Jerome's PreFormatted LightPress plugin, to use in conjunction with his WP Preformatted plugin.

As usual, you can download 1.0.4 from the project filelist, or read its ChangeLog (also copied below for convenience).

Post formatting is fairly basic in LightPress and caters to the "what you type is what you get" crowd. But it's easy to expand LP's formatting abilities by using the PreFormatted 2.0 plugin.

Normally WordPress formats posts only when they're displayed (wasting rendering time and server capacity in the process). The PreFormatted plugin rearranges formatting plugins like Markdown and Textile so that they're only active in the backend, saving a formatted copy of the post to the database. If you use this plugin in the WordPress backend then the formatted data is available to your LightPress site.

Sencer has released a second round of benchmark results comparing WordPress, TextPattern, Serendipity and LightPress. I'm happy to report that LightPress continues to lead the pack at almost twice the speed of TxP and over three times the speed of WP. Memory usage isn't too shabby either.

This is without caching of course, since we have yet to add this feature to LP. A caching plugin is in the works and once it's available I hope we can get included in the second column as well.

If you're wondering whether or not to switch to LightPress, Sencer writes:

If you are a Wordpress user, the only reason for not using the Lightpress frontend is maybe certain plugins (though some are supported in lp) or if you don’t know any html and like the many ready-made templates for Wordpress (lp uses a different, IMHO easier templating system). Both of these points may change in the future.

This site is now hosted on Textdrive. Apart from a few quirks (changed my shell password with

but the MySQL password did not change, reglar users have no access to most

commands, and the usual FreeBSD/Linux differences), everything went smoothly.

I have started work on the backend today. I have had a pretty clear picture of the overall architecture and the general DB layout in my mind for quite a while, but as usual it's difficult to find the time for a new project, at least until there's some code running. A very incomplete but working draft of the authentication/profiling class is in CVS, and I hope to have a working framework (authentication, permissions, roles, menu and modules management) sometimes next week. I am anxiously waiting for Jerome's input (and inevitable patches) as soon as he gets back from his vacation. :)

In the meantime, I have opened a new account on TextDrive, since SourceForge hosting is really really slow and has a few drawbacks (like not being able to send mail to the outside). I will move lightpress.org there as soon as possible, and slowly add new features (daily posts from our Basecamp account, and an Instiki-powered wiki).

As we announced a few hours ago, 1.0.3 fixes a pretty serious (for the page layout and content displayed) bug, improves the integration of Jerome's latest AdminOptions plugin, and adds a new Delicious plugin. We don't expect a new release for the next week or so unless something serious comes up, as we will start to merge our development branches to the trunk, and take some vacation time.

As usual, you can download 1.0.3 from the project filelist, or read its ChangeLog (also copied below for convenience). Jerome has also produced a set of upgrade packages from earlier versions of LighPress.

We have been getting ready to release 1.0.3, but the maintenance on the CVS servers is slowing us down. Since it's already pretty late here, the release will delayed until tomorrow (Italian time), unless Jerome has the time to do it.

1.0.3 fixes a pretty serious (for the page layout and content displayed) bug, improves the integration of Jerome's latest AdminOptions plugin, and adds a new Delicious plugin which you can see in action on my blog.

LightPress has been designed from the ground up as a full replacement for the WordPress front-end. This includes a permalink and

system for "pretty" URLs. The only interaction with WordPress is through the database. This means that LightPress is fully compatible with WordPress 1.5, including the new 1.5.1 release.

Now this is fine if you're starting a site from scratch, but if you're converting an existing WordPress site you may not want to mess with your permalinks. I've made the conversion and hopefully I've done most of the hard work for you! The 1.0.2 LightPress release includes a file called

which converts WordPress-style queries into a format that LightPress prefers. So without further ado, here's what you need to look at.

To encourage (read: bribe) Ramin to switch his blog to LP, I have spent a few hours developing a del.icio.us plugin. To keep it light and reduce dependencies to a minimum, it only uses the base PEAR class, and the native PHP expat functions.

I have just added it (and its template) to the repository, it should show up in viewCVS soon. If you give it a try, let me know if it works in your setup. And if you need new plugins to emulate some functionality of WP you are using in your blog, just ask.