Sander van Dragt

Cuttlefish is a PHP based hackable blog framework -- with the goals of being fast, easily hackable, and easy to adopt. I've been working on it since 2012, when it was known as Carbon. It can generate a static HTML site for uploading anywhere, or run dynamically.

Version 0.4 licenses the code as MIT, so anyone can build on top of the project. Cuttlefish now has API documentation courtesy of PHPDox, which is updated whenever code is changed. I've changed the code style from 'WordPress-like' to the PHP community default of PSR12. The project now comes with a Docker container which means getting up and running is even easier.

Install Cuttlefish is easy using the instructions. For a fuller list of changes see https://github.com/svandragt/cuttlefish/releases/tag/v0.4.

Known issue:  I still have trouble getting Xdebug to work, if you're familiar with Docker Compose and Xdebug I could use your help.

For v0.5, now that the codebase is in a better state, I'm looking at adding more features again.

#cuttlefish #projects

It seems today is 0.3 day, as I'm also releasing Carbon 0.3, my hackable performant semi-static blogging system.

This release mainly deals with technical debt as I first started this project 6 years ago as a playground for figuring out how a CMS is written from the ground up. This means there are out of date requirements, references to a Windows platform with Powershell and other such bad examples.

That said the codebase isn't in a terrible state although it will have to change significantly before it's production ready. If you know a bit of PHP then after a short study it can be customised to your needs quite easily.

So, if you're interested you can use it and quickly whip together a documentation or simple blog using only markdown files. It will produce a feed and there's even a half baked cli application and static site generation that I have to review before I can recommend it in honest.

Have fun hacking!

#projects #carbon

I have been working with Carbon over the last weeks and one thing I noticed was that having to navigate through the admin menu repeatedly was getting a bit long in the tooth. Sure, for the occasional admin task it's useful to have the admin close to the site itself.

After adding deployment through powershell it became clear that switching between admin and commandline is not ideal either. So I decided to implement all administration throughu the powershell script.

With 0.2.3 you can add the following parameters to the script:

• login: login to admin
• draft: create draft
• generate: generate static site
• deploy: deploy to live
• clear_cache: empty cache

The script will also tell you the correct syntax if you get it wrong. Happy carbonating!

#carbon #games

I've released another version of Carbon, the framework powering this website. It's really a refinement and bugfix release, with the following changes:

• config: Admin password now needs to be manually enabled
• cache: Correctly generate htaccess
• deployment: only replace hostnames in text files
• cache: only write cache when caching is enabled.
• theme: remove older articles link (non functional)
• deployment: new feature - replace hostname from a to b before deploying cached site

Releases are available via github by clicking on tags.

Screencast

To celebrate the new release, I've also recorded another screencast (list of screencasts). In Screencast #4, we create a new post using the admin interface; use the generate site feature to create a full static cache; and finally run the powershell deployment script to deploy to my host over sftp.

All in under 2 minutes!

#carbon