Shared Serendipity Installation(s)

Often people ask how to setup a shared Serendipity installation. Even though this is documented, there is no "run and be happy" script provided for that. The reason is that usually your webserver has specific dependencies on how to maintain virtual hosts, user directories and SQL databases.

Thus, services like supersized.org or others need to create their own scripts for dealing with this.

A help for novice users now comes through Chris Lander. He has committed Bash and Perl scripts that take on the job of setting up shared installations. The CVS repository where he committed his code is online at SourceForge ViewCVS. You can also download the whole package.

Chris is very enthusiastic about getting feedback or other user help. You can reach him at "clander at labbs dot com". Drop him a line, if you are using his scripts!

German Magazine "Internet Professionell 4/06" about Serendipity

Thanks to HadleyB from the forums I was notified, that the current issue of the german magazine Internet Professionell had some editorial words from the editor in chief about Serendipity.

Here's a snippet of the original text in german and my translation to english:


Multiuser-Blog
"Mehrere individuelle Weblogs, ohne die Blog-Software mehrmals zu installieren: Mit Serendipity und ein paar Tricks klappt das wunderbar"

Ich wollte ein paar Leuten die Möglichkeit geben, auf einer meiner Websites ihr ganz persönliches Weblog zu schreiben. Zum einen wertet das meine Website mit interessanten Geschichten auf, zum anderen stärkt es die Community zu meiner Site. Die User sollten so weit voneinander getrennt sein, dass sie nur auf ihren eigenen Bereich Zugriff haben, und ich wollte die Blog-Software nur ein einziges Mal auf dem Webserver installieren. Überraschenderweise fand ich zunächst kein Open-Source-PHP-Skript dafür, dass auch sonst komfortabel und leistungsfähig ist.

Fündig geworden bin ich letztlich bei Serendipity (www.s9y.org). Mit ein paar einfachen Tricks funktioniert es damit hervorragend, und die User haben sogar individuelle Design-Templates [...].

Insgesamt hat mich Serendipity als Blog-Software reichlich überzeugt, weil es flexibel und sehr einfach anpassbar ist. Und vor allem ist es benutzerfreundlich genug, dass auch weniger erfahrene Blogger damit klarkommen. Probieren Sie's mal aus und schreiben Sie mir, was Sie davon halten.

Franz Neumeier, Chefredakteur. Internet Professionell 04/06.


Multiuser-Blog
"Several individual weblogs, without installing the blog application multiple times: Using Serendipity and some tricks make it happen easily"

I wanted to give some people the opportunity to maintain a personal weblog on my website. On the one hand this adds interesting stories to my website and on the other hand it strengthens the community towards my website. The users should be kept independent from each other, so that they only have access to their specific area, and I wanted the blog application to only have installed once on my webserver. Surprisingly I did not find any Open-Source-PHP-Application that suited my needs and was also comfortable and powerful to use.

I finally found what I needed with Serendipity (www.s9y.org). Using a few tricks, it all works flawlessly and the users have their individual design-templates[...].

All in all, Serendipity has persuaded me in many ways, because it's flexible to use and easy to customize. And most importantly, it is easy to use for even inexperienced bloggers. You should try it and tell me what you think.

Franz Neumeier, editor in chief. Internet Professionell 04/06.

Thanks for these kind words, I think they speak for themselves. :-)

Spartacus Plugin Overview Page

I had a couple of hours spare time today - recovering from the german karneval - , so I spent it hopefully usefully on this Page:

http://php-blog.sourceforge.net/

(will be available as http://spartacus.s9y.org/ shortly)

The design is temporary, it's the content that matters. It's an auto-generated snapshot and download page of the Serendipity Plugin and Template repository. Something like pear.php.net, but a bit more light-weight.

It should serve well for people that cannot run Spartacus or who want to look at our repository.

Please consider that page as experimental. The core texts are not translated, only the plugin descriptions are.

Any feedback is appreciated. If you face bugs, please let me know.

The page will be refreshed about ever 24 hours, but expect a delay of max. 48 hours in terms of anonymous CVS lagging.

SVN: 1.0 branch and trunk policy

I am currently working on Image directory permissions and including some other "unstable" stuff. I'll need to put it into SVN trunk so that other people can help developing.

Thus I've just created the "1.0" SVN branch point which holds the 1.0 branch and possibly upcoming 1.0.x maintenance releases.

SVN "trunk" is now the new, testing "1.1-alpha1" playground.

Developers, please commit fixes to both the branch AND trunk. Do not check out trunk if you need a stable system.

Users, if you need a stable system, please download the 1.0-beta1 release candidate or wait for the upcoming 1.0 final. Do not use the nightly snapshots if you depend on a stable system. B0rkage could happen, even though we give our best so that it doesn't.

Serendipity in Space Stations

We got word from a fellow Serendipity user, who told us how happily he is using Serendipity:

I use Serendipity on a lot of my blogs, and I know it is simple to use and reliable as a result of the work you the rest of the project have put in.

I picked it up and used it for the GIOVE-A satellite launch, this is the first satellite of the new European satellite navigation system Galileo which is similar in principle to GPS. The launch was scheduled to take place on Boxing day, 26th December but may be delayed.

It is all exciting stuff, so I reckon there are lots of people like me who use Serendipity and think this would be pretty cool too. I'm using the remote RSS reader sidebar plugin to pull in an RSS feed of press releases, other self-confessed tech-heads may wish to do the same with the blog feed - this doesn't happen every week!

The site will be displaying a live countdown to the launch and provide background on the the Gailileo project, podcasts and links to live video footage. Using the categories sidebar I have provided a variety of feeds for journalists, tech-heads and team members to keep up with events.

Anyway, I'd like to thank Serendipity for making this possible and let's spread the word!

URL: http://www.engineeringbritain.com/space

I will gladly write a more in depth "success story" for the S9 project at a later date.

Best Regards,

Robin Wolstenholme MEng MIEE MIEEE

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience, and we wish you all the best with the project!