LightPress

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.

We have worked round the clock after yesterday's release of 1.0.1 to bring you 1.0.2 (easier than it seems when the developers have 9 timezones between them). This new release fixes a few minor bugs, improves Jerome's AdminOptions plugin integrating it in both templates, and adds an optional WP compatibility file to use WP's .htaccess (I have not delved into it yet, but I'm sure Jerome will explain its workings in a comment as soon as he wakes up).

As usual, you can download 1.0.2 from the project filelist, or read its ChangeLog. If there are no serious bugs, we will merge our dev branches to the trunk today or tomorrow, and release the first 1.1 unstable.

1.0.1 adds a port of Michael Heilemann's Kubrick template, together with a new plugin (AdminOptions) and a few improvements by Jerome. This release also adds a new 'category_separator' config option, but if you are upgrading you do not need to worry about adding it to your config.php, as the new code merges your options with a set of defaults to save potential errors.

You can download 1.0.1 from the project filelist, or read its ChangeLog. In the next few days we are going to merge our development branches to the trunk, and release the first 1.1.0 unstable release with lots of new features. We will also post a daily summary from our Basecamp project site to keep you informed of what's going on behind the scenes.

Jerome submitted the last patches against RC2, and even reverted a small mess I made a couple of days ago, so we are proud to announce 1.0.0. You can download it from the project filelist, or read its ChangeLog.

We are already busy working on the next unstable, which will feature many improvements: a tighter integration with WP and its admin console, user-defined contexts, and a revised plugin system which will greatly simplify adapting content to the current context. Stay tuned.