Setup a planet for community blogging

Communication and Outreach
1

Hi all,

this thread follows this on concerning the possibility to open a planet to aggregate blog posts witten by the community.

I studied a bit some software and I found 3 :

  • the original Planet software which run on Python (demo),
  • the Venus fork which also run on Python (demo),
  • the Pluto fork which seem to be written in Ruby (demo).

The Venus and Pluto fork demos are very ugly but they seem to have a templating system (e.g : Pluto’s). This will allow us to have a coherent design with the foundation site but also mean more work to setup the planet on starting.

IMHO, Pluto is the best choice as it is written in Ruby. If anybody as already use it before, or even setup a planet before, I’m open to any suggestions. I will try to setup a Pluto server on my computer as soon as I have it back to make a feedback.

What are your opinions on this subject ?

Note: This discussion was imported from Loomio. Click here to view the original discussion.

2

FWIW, we already have a working planet source, but it’s not merged into the project site yet.

From: https://www.loomio.org/d/dXFfls2c/new-blog-for-diaspora?page=1#comment-388652

3

Good ! Where can I find it ?

4

Setup a planet for community blogging

In any case, this has already been passed in a previous vote… (which I also linked to on the recent thread).

5

In any case, this has already been passed in a previous vote… (which I also linked to on the recent thread).

I know that. I’m not asking if we should do that but how you want me to do that. :wink:

@dennisschubert says we have a working planet source, just telle where I can find it and I’ll try to set up something usable.

6

@dennisschubert can you merge the code in? Does it need anything or is it practically ready to use? If blogs don’t appear, we can always remove it.

7

Will give it a shot today, I’ve got some spare time. :slight_smile:

8

Which version of Ruby does it run on ?
If it is <=1.9.3 I can host it on my host provider, if not, I must search for another.

9

Since it will be part of diaspora-project-site, … 2.1. And you don’t have to look for a provider, since it will be part of the diaspora-project-site… :wink:

10

Yeah ! Nothing to do ! \o/

11

Quick update: the planet is working fine and already merged into the develop sources from diaspora-project-site.

However, I got really mad at our old static bootstrap.css and the huge mess in the templates, so I’m going to fix that before I’ll release the new site (with the planet).

But you guys could start collecting feeds, huh? English only, for the first try. :slight_smile:

12

@dennisschubert good news, this should go viral on diaspora*! :wink:

13

Since we got atom feeds for user profiles we could also consider some these I guess.

14

I suggest you start feeding with the diasporaHQ profile.
Also, wouldn’t it be a good idea to work with Pablo Cúbico since he started a new site design ?

15

I got really mad at our old static bootstrap.css and the huge mess in the templates

That might be my fault. [hides in corner] Would be great if you could sort it out.

16

We could perhaps do a diaspora HQ post to ask for people who blog about Diaspora? What should it be asking?

Would the following be a possibility?

  • people who want their posts to be included in the planet add the category ‘Diaspora’ to all posts they write about Diaspora so these can be picked up by the planet but other, non-related blog posts aren’t picked up.
  • if they’re writing in a language other than English, add a tag for that language to the post, so that the planet can provide a language selection tool.
17

That might be my fault.

You didn’t check the source in. So no, not your fault. :wink:

Also, wouldn’t it be a good idea to work with Pablo Cúbico

The draft is also based on the broken bootstrap.css and I want to get things released. The new design can get rolled out in another release… :wink:

18

pre-release version (not yet linked in the main menu bar): https://planet.diasporafoundation.org/

someone please collect feeds now!

re: diaspora-user-feeds. jonne and I found out we have some weird markdown/html-mix there, so we’re not really able to use them, for now.

19

How does the planet work ? Does it aggregate all the content of the blog using RSS or there’s a mean to select which posts to fetch ?

Other question : will it be multi-language in a near future ?
I have written three posts on a blog about diaspora* but they are in French.

20

will it be multi-language in a near future ?

I think good blog posts about Diaspora should be incorporated into the planet, no matter what language they are written in. It might be possible in the future to implement a language filter for the planet (see my previous post in this thread for my ideas about that), but we shouldn’t wait until a filter is available before including content written in all languages. I’m always keen to get away from the dominance of English!