Lines Blog by Opoloo¶ ↑

Introduction¶ ↑

Lines is a customizable blog framework for rails developers. It aims at making publishing simple and beautiful.

Lines is a very slim, feature-constrained, young publishing platform. It is not wordpress or blogger and it doesn't aspire to be. It needs brains, work, and time to mature. It is a framework for tech-savvies who care about their content with the freedom of full OSS access.

To get an idea of the appearance, see the screenshots below, visit the Lines Website, or see it in action at link: blog.opoloo.com

Note for Rails 4 lovers¶ ↑

If you prefer a cutting edge Rails 4 version of Lines, checkout the rails4 branch

Features & Specifications¶ ↑

• based on Rails 3.2

• solid editing system

• simple, consistent publishing process

• clear, responsive presentation

• extendable & customizable

• full focus on content

Features¶ ↑

• 960x540 px hero graphics for posts

• upload default hero images that you want to use more frequently

• customizable generic titles & subtitles

• automatic teaser & scaled image for the article overview

• determine featured article

• six headline styles according to priority

• italics & bold text

• block quotes

• images, lists, links

• tags for articles

• G+ link to social network discussion

• multiple authors and author information (for your small company or guest authors)

• add documents for download

• formatting help

• direct RSS reader access

• code highlighting

Installation¶ ↑

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone git@github.com:opoloo/lines.git
   

2. Switch into the lines directory:

   cd lines
   

3. There is a installation task that will guide you through the rest of the installation process. Just switch to the 'lines' directory and run:

   ruby install.rb
   

If you need some more information or help, you can just follow this readme file.

Managing admin users¶ ↑

Currently Lines does not offer a GUI for managing users. Just open a console with 'rails c' and add/change a user manually:

# CREATE a new user
User.create(email: "[email protected]", password: "yoursecret")

# UPDATE an existing user
u = User.find_by_email('[email protected]')
u.email = "[email protected]"
u.password = "newsekret"
u.save

Adjust database details¶ ↑

To adjust your database details, go to config/database.yml

username: DATABASE_USERNAME
password: DATABASE_PASSWORD

There'll be 3 blocks that contain username & password. Development-, Test- & Production-Database.

If there is no config/database.yml, just copy the config/database.yml.dist like that:

cd config
cp database.yml.dist database.yml

or like this (in case you want to stay in your root directory):

cp config/database.yml.dist config/database.yml

Renaming the config/database.yml.dist to config/database.yml works as well.

Google Sitemap¶ ↑

The sitemap_generator gem (github.com/kjvarga/sitemap_generator) handles the creation of sitemaps for search engines. To update the sitemap on server, run:

bundle exec rake sitemap:refresh:no_ping # don't ping search engines
bundle exec rake sitemap:refresh         # ping search engines

Don't forget to adjust the full url to your sitemaps in public/robots.txt

Documentation¶ ↑

The complete documentation can be found at rdoc.info: rdoc.info/github/opoloo/lines/master/frames

Customization¶ ↑

Modify CSS/SCSS¶ ↑

Admin viewer SCSS: app/assets/stylesheets/admin.css.scss

Default viewer SCSS: app/assets/stylesheets/style.css.scss

Modify custom hero images¶ ↑

You can add, remove or change the HERO_IMAGES variable inside the app/models/article.rb model. The corresponding images reside inside the public/heroes directory.

Header (Meta) & Footer¶ ↑

To change the header/meta/footer elements you need to modify app/views/layouts/application.html.erb

Screenshots¶ ↑

Some screenshots to get an impression of the look & feel

Dashboard¶ ↑

Create or edit an article¶ ↑

Preview and publish¶ ↑

License¶ ↑

You may use the Lines blog template as you please. You must, however, keep the footer section, so attribution to Lines and Opoloo is granted.

We heartily invite you to extend the features of the template, but when you do, you should fork it on GitHub, so everyone can profit from your work.

You can see the full license here: choosealicense.com/licenses/lgpl-v3/