SBlog - The Challenge Begins
Last updated at 11:51 am UTC on 17 January 2006
The Squeak Weblog Server challenge started on October 11, 2003. The first meeting among the participants principal purpose is to design the program to be implemented. The feature set of the program was discussed, and 'cast into stone' so that the team understood what the challenges' requirements.
The Challenge Takers:
Coming into the challenge, group members were expected to understand what a weblog is, and what types of interaction a weblog server requirs. The first part of the meeting was administrative, making sure that everyone understood what is expected, what the starting points are, etc. In particular there were three points:
- Start Image and packages
- Feature Set
- Templates
The group decided on using Squeak 3.6 final as the base image, and to use Monticello for package management. Also, the base packages should be available via an automated build. In part this is so that each team member may work in their preferred environment, only parts of the challenge image must be standardized upon. Originally, the moderator was going to provide a pre-built image, but decided against that as it seemed to limit a groups decisions on which packages to use.
The group also knew going in that a web server was to be included, so the Kom 6.2 package was selected. Also, a web development framework was chosen, Seaside. These were also included into the base build.
Feature Set
Note: Writers who author a weblog are called Authors, those that read and comment on weblogs are called Readers. Each entry in a weblog is called an Entry or a Post.
The Features
- Runs on the big three desktop platforms (Mac, Windows, Unix)
- Required to run in a headless enviornment, as well as a desktop image
- Talks to the world via a web UI (this was different from that specified in the original SBlog Features )
- Create Posts
- Edit Posts
- User Definable CSS Template for front page and archive pages
- Multiple Authors per weblog
- Multiple Authors on the Server
- Categories for Posts
- Entries can be categorized
- Multiple Categories, but the categories are not hierarchical
- One server, multiple blogs, multiple authors
- Cross authoring of blogs
- Ability to comment posts.
- Ability to delete posts
- The comments need not be threaded
- TrackBacks are NOT required
- Archive navigation UI (usually a calendar on most blogs)
- RSS 2.0 syndication for the weblog
- Browser Support (CSS 1.0 + theoretical, but specifically)
- Microsoft IE 5+
- Mozilla 1.0 +
Templates
The design team decided that the standard idea of templates in the weblog server should be custom built for the product, not predefined or lifted from other weblog servers. This serves two purposes; first it's more flexible to build into the server itself. Second, self defining the template also means that they can be incrementally implemented, the team doesn't need to implement everything all at once.
SBlog Challenge Participants Area
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