django-blog-zinnia 0.7

A clear and powerfull weblog application powered with Django

Simple yet powerful application for managing a blog within your Django website.

Zinnia has been made for publishing weblog entries and designed to do it well.

Basically any feature that can be provided by another reusable app has been left out. Why should we re-implement something that is already done and reviewed by others and tested.

Contents

• Features

• Dependencies

• Installation

  • Applications

  • Template Context Processors

  • Media Files

  • URLs

• Advanced Configuration

  • Sitemap

  • Akismet

  • Bit.ly

  • Twitter

  • Django-CMS

  • TinyMCE

  • XML-RPC

• Template Tags

• Development

• Translations

• Resources

• Examples

Features

Main features :

• Comments

• Sitemaps

• Archives views

• Related entries

• Private entries

• RSS or Atom Feeds

• Tags and categories views

• Advanced search engine

• Prepublication and expiration

• Widgets (Popular entries, Similar entries, …)

• Spam protection with Akismet

• MetaWeblog API

• Ping Directories

• Ping External links

• Bit.ly support

• Twitter support

• Gravatar support

• Django-CMS plugins

• Collaborative work

• Tags autocompletion

• Pingback/Trackback support

• WYMeditor or TinyMCE support

• WordPress conversion utility

• Ready to use and extendables templates

• Windows Live Writer compatibility

Take a look at the online demo at : http://django-blog-zinnia.com

Dependencies

Make sure to install these packages prior to installation :

• akismet

• django-mptt

• django-tagging

• BeautifulSoup

Installation

You could retrieve the last sources from http://github.com/Fantomas42/django-blog-zinnia and run the installation script

$> python setup.py install

or use pip

$> pip install -e git://github.com/Fantomas42/django-blog-zinnia.git#egg=django-blog-zinnia

For the latest stable version use easy_install

$> easy_install django-blog-zinnia

Applications

Then register zinnia, and these following applications in the INSTALLED_APPS section of your project’s settings.

>>> INSTALLED_APPS = (
...   # Your favorite apps
...   'django.contrib.contenttypes',
...   'django.contrib.comments',
...   'django.contrib.sites',
...   'django.contrib.admin',
...   'tagging',
...   'mptt',
...   'zinnia',)

Template Context Processors

Add these following template context processors if not already present.

>>> TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS = (
...      'django.core.context_processors.auth',
...      'django.core.context_processors.i18n',
...      'django.core.context_processors.request',
...      'django.core.context_processors.media',
...      'zinnia.context_processors.media',
...      'zinnia.context_processors.version', # Optional
...   )

Media Files

You have to make a symbolic link from zinnia/media/zinnia directory to your media directory or make a copy named zinnia, but if want to change this value, define ZINNIA_MEDIA_URL in the settings.py as appropriate.

And don’t forget to serve this URL.

URLs

Add the following lines to your project’s urls.py in order to display the blog.

>>> url(r'^weblog/', include('zinnia.urls')),
>>> url(r'^comments/', include('django.contrib.comments.urls')),

Note that the default zinnia URLset is provided for convenient usage, but you can customize your URLs if you want. Here’s how :

>>> url(r'^', include('zinnia.urls.capabilities')),
>>> url(r'^search/', include('zinnia.urls.search')),
>>> url(r'^sitemap/', include('zinnia.urls.sitemap')),
>>> url(r'^trackback/', include('zinnia.urls.trackback')),
>>> url(r'^weblog/tags/', include('zinnia.urls.tags')),
>>> url(r'^weblog/feeds/', include('zinnia.urls.feeds')),
>>> url(r'^weblog/authors/', include('zinnia.urls.authors')),
>>> url(r'^weblog/categories/', include('zinnia.urls.categories')),
>>> url(r'^weblog/discussions/', include('zinnia.urls.discussions')),
>>> url(r'^weblog/', include('zinnia.urls.entries')),
>>> url(r'^comments/', include('django.contrib.comments.urls')),

Advanced Configuration

Sitemap

One of the cool features of Django is the sitemap application, so if you want to fill your website’s sitemap with the entries of your blog, follow these steps.

• Register django.contrib.sitemaps in the INSTALLED_APPS section.

• Edit your project’s URLs and add this code :

>>> from zinnia.sitemaps import TagSitemap
>>> from zinnia.sitemaps import EntrySitemap
>>> from zinnia.sitemaps import CategorySitemap
>>> from zinnia.sitemaps import AuthorSitemap
>>>
>>> sitemaps = {'tags': TagSitemap,
...             'blog': EntrySitemap,
...             'authors': AuthorSitemap,
...             'categories': CategorySitemap,}
...
>>> urlpatterns += patterns('django.contrib.sitemaps.views',
...                         (r'^sitemap.xml$', 'index',
...                          {'sitemaps': sitemaps}),
...                         (r'^sitemap-(?P<section>.+)\.xml$', 'sitemap',
...                          {'sitemaps': sitemaps}),
...                         )

Akismet

By default the Akismet spam protection is enabled when anyone leaves a comment.

IMPORTANT : you need an API key. If you don’t have any, get one for free at http://akismet.com/personal/ then set it in your project’s settings like this :

>>> AKISMET_SECRET_API_KEY = 'your key'

If you don’t want spam protection for comments, you can disable it with this setting.

>>> ZINNIA_AKISMET_COMMENT = False

Bit.ly

You find Bit.ly useful and want to use it for your blog entries ?

It’s simple, install django_bitly in your project’s settings and add these settings.

>>> BITLY_LOGIN = 'your bit.ly login'
>>> BITLY_API_KEY = 'your bit.ly api key'

Zinnia will do the rest.

Twitter

When you post a new entry on your blog you might want to tweet it as well.

In order to do that, you first need to activate the Bit.ly support like described above.

Then install tweepy and add these settings.

>>> TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY = 'Your Consumer Key'
>>> TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET = 'Your Consumer Secret'
>>> TWITTER_ACCESS_KEY = 'Your Access Key'
>>> TWITTER_ACCESS_SECRET = 'Your Access Secret'

Note that the authentification for Twitter has changed since September 2010. The actual authentification system is based on oAuth. That’s why now you need to set these 4 settings. If you don’t know how to get these information, follow this excellent tutorial at:

http://jmillerinc.com/2010/05/31/twitter-from-the-command-line-in-python-using-oauth/

Now in the admin, you can post an update containing your entry’s title and the shortened url of your entry.

Django-CMS

If you use django-cms, Zinnia can be integrated into your pages, thanks to the plugin system.

Simply register zinnia.plugins in the INSTALLED_APPS section of your project’s settings.

It will provides custom plugins for adding entries into your pages, an App-Hook and Menus for easy integration.

TinyMCE

If you want to replace WYMEditor by TinyMCE install django-tinymce and follow the installation instructions.

TinyMCE can be customized by overriding the admin/zinnia/entry/tinymce_textareas.js template.

XML-RPC

Zinnia provides few webservices via XML-RPC, but before using it, you need to install django-xmlrpc.

Then register django_xmlrpc in your INSTALLED_APPS section of your project’s settings.

Now add these lines in your project’s settings.

>>> from zinnia.xmlrpc import ZINNIA_XMLRPC_METHODS
>>> XMLRPC_METHODS = ZINNIA_XMLRPC_METHODS

ZINNIA_XMLRPC_METHODS is a simple list of tuples containing all the webservices embedded in Zinnia.

If you only want to use the Pingback service import ZINNIA_XMLRPC_PINGBACK, or if you want you just want to enable the MetaWeblog API import ZINNIA_XMLRPC_METAWEBLOG.

You can also use your own mixins.

Finally we need to register the url of the XML-RPC server. Insert something like this in your project’s urls.py:

>>> url(r'^xmlrpc/$', 'django_xmlrpc.views.handle_xmlrpc'),

Note : For the Pingback service check if your site is enabled for pingback detection. More information at http://hixie.ch/specs/pingback/pingback-1.0#TOC2

Template Tags

Zinnia provides several template tags based on inclusion_tag system to create some widgets in your website’s templates.

• get_recent_entries(number=5, template=”zinnia/tags/recent_entries.html”)

Display the latest entries.

• get_random_entries(number=5, template=”zinnia/tags/random_entries.html”)

Display random entries.

• get_popular_entries(number=5, template=”zinnia/tags/popular_entries.html”)

Display popular entries.

• get_similar_entries(number=5, template=”zinnia/tags/similar_entries.html”)

Display entries similar to an existing entry.

• get_calendar_entries(year=auto, month=auto, template=”zinnia/tags/calendar.html”)

Display an HTML calendar with date of publications.

• get_archives_entries(template=”zinnia/tags/archives_entries.html”)

Display the archives by month.

• get_archives_entries_tree(template=”zinnia/tags/archives_entries_tree.html”)

Display all the archives as a tree.

• get_categories(template=”zinnia/tags/categories.html”)

Display all the categories available.

• get_recent_comments(number=5, template=”zinnia/tags/recent_comments.html”)

Display the latest comments.

• zinnia_breadcrumbs(separator=”/”, root_name=”Blog”, template=”zinnia/tags/breadcrumbs.html”)

Display the breadcrumbs for the pages handled by Zinnia.

• get_gravatar(email, size=80, rating=’g’, default=None)

Display the Gravatar image associated to an email, usefull for comments.

Development

A Buildout script is provided to properly initialize the project for anybody who wants to contribute to the project.

First of all, please use VirtualEnv to protect your system.

Follow these steps to start the development :

$> git clone git://github.com/Fantomas42/django-blog-zinnia.git
$> virtualenv --no-site-packages django-blog-zinnia
$> cd django-blog-zinnia
$> source ./bin/activate
$> python bootstrap.py
$> ./bin/buildout

The buildout script will resolve all the dependencies needed to develop the application.

Once these operations are done, you are ready to develop the zinnia project.

Run this command to launch the tests.

$> ./bin/test

Pretty easy no ?

Translations

If you want to contribute by updating a translation or adding a translation in your language, it’s simple: create a account on Transifex.net and you can edit the translations at this URL :

http://www.transifex.net/projects/p/django-blog-zinnia/c/master/

Resources

• Online documentation of Zinnia.

• Online API of Zinnia module.

• Discussions and help at Google Group.

• For reporting a bug or submitting a suggestion use Github Issues.

Examples

• Demo site of Zinnia.

• Fantomas’ side.

• Professional Web Studio.

If you are a proud user of Zinnia, send me the URL of your website and I will add it to the list.