Stuff and Content

One of the most common issues of newcomers to eZ Publish is the setup of a system suitable for running it. Without a correctly configured system in place they usually do not get beyond the installation process and abandon their evaluation before having experienced the product.  The eZ Publish puppet module is an attempt to codify the requirements  for running eZ Publish and provide a means for automatically creating a system suitable for running it - no more following a checklist of "setting up eZ Publish on XYZ". The eZ Publish 5 Virtual Machine can be found on github at  https://github.com/brucem/vagrant-puppet-ezpublish .   It combines Vagrant, VirtualBox & Puppet to generate a VM with the current eZ Publish community version (2013.4) installed and ready to be configured. The README.md  provides details of the requirements and how to use it. Vagrant is a system that  orchestrates the automatic creation and configuration of s...

In my last blog post I wrote about an eZ Publish Puppet module that I'd created that could be used to setup and install eZ Publish. Its been awhile since I'd done any work on it (and blogged for that matter!) and in that time both Puppet and Vagrant have matured considerably. I've also had more experience creating Puppet modules and managing systems with Puppet. I've decided to re-write the eZ Publish module from scratch utilising Puppets own modules for apache and mysql. The result is available on GitHub and in the Puppet Module Forge . The overall functionality in the new module is essentially the same as the old one, but elements have been decoupled.  This allows for the various components that make up an eZ Publish "stack" to be combined to match the desired architecture. e.g. a standalone system with the database and application on the one system to a clustered systems where different components are on separate syst...

This is not another how to setup Ubuntu to run eZ Publish guide...well not really. One of the biggest hurdles when getting started with eZ Publish is successfully installing the CMS. This process often fails because the system on which it is being installed is not configured correctly. If you do not have a helpful systems administrator handy it can be quite difficult to get past the initial steps. There are a number of solutions that allow you to manage the configuration of computer systems. Two of the most popular are Puppet & Chef . These systems allow you to create "recipes" of how systems should be setup. I've put together a eZ Publish module for Puppet that: Configures a system suitable to run eZ Publish  Setup Virtual Hosts configured to run eZ Publish  Sets up a Database  Downloads eZ Publish  Configures a kickstart.ini file It's a bit like a guide to setting up eZ publish on Ubuntu but doesn't require you to manually follow the ...

I've just checked my blog and was quite shocked to see that's my last post was almost 2 years ago!  In my defence I've been quite busy and managed to get quite a few things done in that time.  A few highlights have been: Winning the 2010 eZ Publish Blogger of the Year Working with the great team at Vision with Technology Working with old friends and some new ones Getting engaged Travel Learning to love system administration again Getting married Running a local web design meetup group Hopefully I'll have some time for blogging again soon!

Following on from yesterdays post on checking out the eZ Admin Interface prototype I've created an extension that can be easily downloaded, installed and enabled. Download the extension from here Copy to your extension directory and untar: tar xzf admin2prototype.tgz Enable it in your admin siteaccess by editing settings/siteaccess/site_admin/site.ini.append.php and adding: [ExtensionSettings] ActiveAccessExtensions[]=admin2prototype Clear the cache To disable, simply remove the settings from step 3 above and clear the cache. Note: If you enable the extension via the admin interface (Setup -> Extensions) this will effect all site accesses including your front end ones.  Things to check out in the prototype: Lack of Shop and Design tabs - these are disabled by default in eZ Publish 4.3 Hidden right menu. Click on the [+] to expand Content menu (Left Hand side under Content, Users & Media Tabs) can be variably sized. Grab the bottom right hand corner an...

The Admin Interface Refresh project has had a concept implemented that can be reviewed live with an eZ Publish install. This is a guide on how to get things working. The new Admin Interface design is a prototype and it's constantly being refined so don't try this on your production servers. Starting from a clean install of eZ Publish 4.2 with the the eZ Flow package (with content) Change into the design directory # cd design Checkout the design # svn co http://pubsvn.ez.no/nextgen/trunk/design/admin2 Edit settings/siteaccess/admin_site/site.ini.append.php and change the SiteDesign to admin2 [DesignSettings] SiteDesign=admin2 Grab new menu.ini - this is required to display the left hand menus under Setup and My account. # cd settings/siteaccess/ admin_site / # wget http://pubsvn.ez.no/nextgen/trunk/settings/menu.ini Clear the cache You should now be able to view the new interface and it should look something like this: To revert back to the original inter...

The eZ Publish winter conference is a free conference being held in Geneva on 21 st and 22 nd of January 2010, with the Community Day being held on the 22 nd . If you are like me and can't make it there is some exciting news! eZ Publish's Community Manager Nicolas Pastorino has setup a Ustream account for the eZ Community and scheduled a event for the community day. That's right the Community Day will be streamed live! Show your support of this wonderful initiative by signing up to Ustream and RSVPing to the event ! (Note that two events for they day one for the morning session and another for the afternoon one.) The Ustream interface allows for a twitter channel as well as inline chat allowing participation throughout the day.  The twitter hastag is #ezwintercf . If you know anyone interested in eZ Publish get them to RSVP as well.  It will be great to have as many people as possible participating ! If you have any experience producing an live event like...

I've covered two larger topics in other blog posts ( Admin interface users & Dashboards ) so in this post I'm going to cover a number of smaller suggestions I have for the Admin Interface refresh.  Some of the items have been suggested by others and been added to the specification - I hope I've noted these. Improve underlying HTML Damien has already mentioned linking labels with their related input via the for attribute.  I wasn't aware that there was already an issue for this but I made a start of adding a Accessibility & Usability Improvements project that currently " associates labels with specific form elements, adds "required" class to required input elements to allow attachment of javascript validation ". The project looked at "fixing" the datatype edit templates and the modifications can be viewed in the CHANGELOG . Specific changes I'd like to see in the underlying HTML are: Labels linked to input fields Lab...