Readme.markdown in spontaneous-0.2.0.beta4 vs Readme.markdown in spontaneous-0.2.0.beta5
- old
+ new
@@ -1,51 +1,137 @@
Spontaneous is a revolutionary new content management system that brings the best of Ruby and the best of HTML5 together in one elegant package.
-This is version 2 of an existing (closed source) CMS that has been in active production use for over 6 years. For more information about that, and to see the sites that it powers, please go to http://spontaneous.io
+**[http://spontaneous.io](http://spontaneous.io)**
-## INTRODUCTION
+Spontaneous uses a powerful hierarchical system to organise your information.
+This breaks out of the bonds of the traditional "title, slug, text" model of
+CMS content and instead allows content authors to build complex, highly styled
+pages out of simple, easily editable blocks.
-Spontaneous uses a powerful hierarchical system to organise your information. This breaks out of the bonds of the traditional "title, slug, text" model of CMS content and instead allows content authors to build complex, highly styled pages out of simple, easily editable blocks.
+## Status
-- Ruby 1.9.3
-- Using classes instead of db for metadata
- - Versioning of metadata
- - Keeps the developer in the text editor
- - Simplifies the interface for the site editor
- - Clear separation of content from schema - changing the site metadata
- - Carefully thought out deployment/upgrade process
- - Interaction between code and db content kept to a bare minimum and separated from normal site editing functions (a 'developer view')
-- Built to deliver fast sites
- - Pages render to static HTML if possible
- - Compression of JS & CSS assets
-- Proper workflow
- - Save != publish
- - Site editors can make sweeping changes and then make them live together
-- Multiple outputs
- - Publish the same content to multiple formats (e.g. HTML, RSS, ATOM, JSON, PDF\*, EPUB\*)
-- Sophisticated user managment
- - Customisable per-site roles to determine visibility & editabilty of site content
- - Give specified users access to only specific parts of the site\*
-- HTML5 goodness
- - Drag & drop
- - Resumable uploads
- - Responsive
- - Attractive
- - Simple
-- Powerful hierarchical data
- - Layout is done by the templates not the editor
- - Frees you up to do intricate designs
- - Minimises the risk of breaking the site design (consistent branding)
-- Custom, page based, controllers
- - Define custom actions on particular page types
+[](https://codeclimate.com/github/SpontaneousCMS/spontaneous)
-\* Features currently only sketched out awaiting full implementation
+Spontaneous is very much a work-in-progress but is currently almost feature
+complete. It has been used with great success on multiple sites. However the
+gem release is still marked as 'alpha' because the APIs are in constant flux.
-### The Content Hierarchy
+### Features currently supported
+
+- Definition of complex content hierarchies using ORM model-like classes which:
+ - Allows for versioning of the metadata using standard CVS systems (i.e. git)
+ - Keeps the developer in the text editor
+ - Simplifies the interface for the site editor
+ - Creates a clear separation of content from schema - changing the site metadata
+ - Provides a carefully thought out deployment/upgrade process
+ - Keeps interaction between code and db content to a bare minimum and
+ separated from normal site editing functions (a 'developer view')
+- The schema model allows for 'Page' types which have a URL and 'Piece' types which
+ form the content of pages but have no URL
+- Each content model sub-class (or 'type') has its own set of defined fields and
+ boxes. Each defined box can be configured to allow the addition of any available
+ schema type
+- Each field has a type. The current field types include simple strings (`:string`),
+ long strings (`:text`), Markdown rich text (`:markdown`), images (`:image`, `:photo`),
+ web-video (supporting YouTube, Vimeo & Vine URLs), simple file uploads (`:file`),
+ date (`:date`), pulldowns (`:select` with static & dynamic options),
+ tag fields (`:tag`) and raw HTML code (`:html`)
+- Pure separation of content from presentation. Editors write, the CMS lays it out:
+ - Page content is split into discrete "pieces" of multiple types (and split into
+ multiple 'boxes'). Each of these pieces & boxes has a custom template
+ - This enables sophisticated layouts way beyond those possible when constrained
+ by WYSIWYG based systems
+ - Render content using generated Javascript rather than being limited to HTML
+- Sub-classes inherit their superclasses' fields & boxes so schema metadata can
+ be coded using DRY principles (and since it's just Ruby code, you can also
+ share functionality using Ruby modules)
+- An edit-publish cycle that separates saving changes from making them public
+- Intelligent publishing step that chooses the most effective method to deliver
+ pages, choosing to render & return static HTML pages if possible
+- Define multiple outputs (in multiple formats) on a type-by-type basis. Current supported
+ formats include HTML, XML, Javascript, PHP, JSON, text... in fact any text-based, template driven
+ format you might need
+- Powerful hierarchical structures
+ - Pages have fields & boxes
+ - Boxes have fields and can contain pieces
+ - Pieces can have fields and boxes
+ - Boxes can contain pages
+ - and so on with no depth limit
+- An intuitive, attractive & responsive HTML5 interface with
+ - Resumable, sharded uploads
+ - Upload queueing
+ - Drag & drop file uploads
+ - Accurate previewing
+ - Hierarchical site navigation
+ - Context aware markdown editor
+- Use of a schema "map" to enable re-naming of any schema types without affecting the content currently in the database
+- Image fields can define any number of 'sizes' each of which is created via a custom ImageMagick
+ pipeline (constrcted using [skeptick](https://github.com/maxim/skeptick))
+- Template inheritance based on [Django's templating](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/templates/)
+ using [Cutaneous](https://github.com/SpontaneousCMS/cutaneous)
+- Asset compilation & minimization through [Sprockets](https://github.com/sstephenson/sprockets)
+- Cloud based media storage using [Fog](http://fog.io)
+- Powerful fulltext searching powered by [Xapian](http://xapian.org/)
+ - Each site can have multiple indexes
+ - Each index can be configured to include any subset of the site content on a
+ type-by-type, field-by-field basis
+- A Rack powered public site including the ability to
+ - inject any custom middleware into the request pipeline
+ - define an action that will be run on any GET to a particular type (e.g. for
+ authenticated access to particular types)
+ - define a POST method for individual types
+ - define multiple mini-applications per type (e.g. to allow for commenting)
+- Powerful access control levels control who can do what
+- Embed custom admin applications into the CMS backend
+
+### Aims
+
+The ultimate aim of Spontaneous is to be a CMS system capable of adapting to and
+even leading the progress of the internet.
+
+Publishing HTML pages is not enough, which is why the concept of multiple outputs
+has been baked into the system right from the start.
+
+Eventually owners of a Spontaneous site will not only be able to publish their
+ideas to HTML pages but also use the same content to generate a EPUB & MOBI
+e-books, print quality PDFs to send to a printer and proprietry XML or JSON data
+for consumption by magazine applications running on tablets.
+
+### Roadmap
+
+#### v1
+
+- **Documentation**
+- Finish abstraction of rendering 'filesystem' to allow for rendering to distributed
+ key-value stores (WIP)
+- Separate the storage configuration from the media filesystem
+- Allow configuration of Sprockets to use the defined storage settings
+- Abstract the search interface to allow for use of other indexing systems apart
+ from Xapian (e.g. Elasticsearch, Lucene etc)
+- Support deployment to Heroku (removal of any persisent storage on the filesystem)
+- Asynchronous, long-running field processing including integration with external
+ web-services including callbacks (with transcoding of video through Zencoder
+ as an example usage)
+- Copy-paste to move pages & pieces around within the site
+- Undo
+- Archive not delete, including restoration of deleted content
+- Revert field to previous version
+- Revert page to published version
+- Scheduled publishing
+- Allow for per-type additions to the user interface
+
+#### Future
+
+- Re-write the UI using web-components and ES6
+- Back up the new UI with a full suite of integration tests
+
+
+## Example
+
A Spontaneous site is composed of pages. Within those pages are zero or more 'Boxes'. Each of those Boxes can be configured to accept the addition of zero or more types of object. These object types can either be Pages -- creating a page hierarchy -- or Pieces that are displayed as the page's content.
A Spontaneous site is composed of a set of 'Pages', 'Boxes' and 'Pieces'. Each
'page' in the system maps to a webpage, accessible through a URL. Within that page are a set of Boxes, Pieces and sub-Pages that combine together to form its content.
@@ -123,53 +209,34 @@
This will generate the following interface for the site editors:
<img src="https://github.com/SpontaneousCMS/spontaneous/raw/master/docs/recipe-interface-screenshot.png" alt="Spontaneous interface" width="800" height="577" />
-, meaning that as well as writing copy and selecting images
-the person writing the page also has to spend a lot of effort on the layout of
-the page.
-each of which will be laid out
-automatically into pre-defined templates, leaving the editor to concentra
-
-The only difference between a 'page' and a 'piece' is that pages are directly
-publicly accessible through a URL, whereas pieces are only visible within the
-context of a page.
-
-
-Each of the objects in the content hierarchy -- pages, boxes & pieces -- can
-have zero or more fields. These are where the actual content of the site, such
-as text or images, will be entered by the site editors.
-
-Each
-or 'piece' has zero or more 'boxes' defined. Each of those boxes can be
-configured to accept the addition of zero or more types of page or piece
-
-
-The creation of the various relationships is done using normal Ruby code. Every
-element in the content hierarchy has an associated Ruby class which has
-configuration information about the fields
-
## GETTING STARTED
-Install RVM
+**Install RVM**
curl -L get.rvm.io | bash -s stable
source ~/.rvm/scripts/'rvm'
rvm requirements
-Install Ruby
+**Install Ruby**
- rvm install 1.9.3
+Spontaneous needs ruby >= 1.9.3 and Ruby >= 2.0 is preferred
-Install Spontaneous
+ rvm install 2.1.1
+**Install Spontaneous**
+
gem install spontaneous
Now generate your site. Replace example.com with the domain of your site.
spot create example.com
cd example.com
bundle install
spot init
spot server
+
+and get started hacking the schema for your site...
+