To update, run bundle update wheelhouse.

Release Notes

• Expose breadcrumb trail via the breadcrumb_trail helper method
• Add :renderer option to breadcrumbs helper
• Add :builder option to navigation helper
• Correctly handle and display errors from nested resources
• Add title attributes to editor link popups
• Add CodeMirror as the HTML source editor
• Add support for media filename/name processors
• Improve caching of templates
• Improve performance of Site Overview

To update, run bundle update wheelhouse.

Release Notes

• Fix page previewing functionality
• Fix compatibility with sprockets-rails 3.x
• Loosen gem dependencies to allower newer versions of compass-rails, will_paginate, cancancan, ruby2ruby and rack-cache

To update, run bundle update wheelhouse.

To update, run bundle update wheelhouse mongo to ensure all necessary gems are updated.

Release Notes

• Loosen MongoDB-related dependencies to allow update to mongo 1.12.x gem
• Add text-left, text-right and text-center classes to aligned text in WYSIWYG editor
• Clone all Sprockets processors and compressors directly from main application environment

Release Notes

• Fix setup process and protected site login when the admin path is not /admin
• Add checkbox to explicitly toggle a link or folder from appearing in the navigation
• Disallow system folders from being editable within the admin
• Fix previewing of non-addressable pages/resources in Rails 3

Release Notes

• Fixed bug where application views were attempted to be loaded as templates

Release Notes

• Fixed reporting of the current path in Rails 4.2
• Improved logging of template parsing errors
• Fixed current active page in navigation when previewing a page without a path
• Added the application views to the template parsing lookup paths
• Added admin styles for HTML5 input fields
• Added support for plugin controller hooks (controller.login and controller.logout)

Release Notes

• Fixed page caching with Rails 4.2

Release Notes

• Fixed compatibility with Rails 4.2
• Fixed compatibility with Ruby 2.2
• Add noindex/nofollow meta tags to login pages
• Ensure that redirects are properly validated
• Only allow developers to create new snippets

Release Notes

• Fixed template switching in Rails 3.x
• Fixed compatibility with Compass 1.0
• Allow references to the node object from within templates
• Improved error messages for unauthorized actions
• Fixed editor permissions relating to publishing/unpublishing
• Ensure that plugin admin routes are added before the Wheelhouse path dispatcher

Release Notes

• Fixed theme asset precompilation in Rails 3.x when config.assets.initialize_on_precompile = false
• Improve placeholders polyfill (uses native behaviour when possible)
• Add support for custom classes on section dropdown sublabels

Release Notes

• Fixed handler routing in Rails 3.2.18, 4.0.5 and 4.1.1
• Fixed editor content background in Firefox
• Improved font rendering in Firefox on Mac OS X
• Fixed popup stacking order
• Added :editor => false option to content fields to disable the WYSIWYG editor

Release Notes

• Fixed compatibility with Rails 4.1.0 final release
• Loop collections no longer yield empty items to the template
  (can be overridden by passing :include_blank => true as an option to loop)
• Allow multiple classes to be applied to elements within editor
• Allow i- and inline- as prefixes for inline style class names
• Added default admin.css.sass for newly generated themes
• Minor visual fixes to Media Library and media popups

As usual, updating is as easy as running bundle update wheelhouse from within your Rails application directory.

Rails 4 support

Better late than never, Wheelhouse now includes full support for Rails 4. This includes the latest stable release (currently 4.0.3) as well as the release candidate for version 4.1.0.

Rails 4 is now the recommended version of Rails to use with Wheelhouse CMS (Rails 3.1 and 3.2 will continue to be supported).

Revamped link dialog

Among the numerous UI improvements in Wheelhouse CMS 1.1, probably the most significant is the revamped link dialog, which makes it much easier to create links to other pages within your site (no more having to memorize the full path).

More improvements and refinements are planned for the link page chooser and the popups in general, so keep an eye out for future releases.

Other UI improvements

In Wheelhouse CMS 1.1, the Manage Site link now acts as a dropdown menu, allowing you to easily create new pages from anywhere within the admin area. Plugins can also take advantage of this with custom dropdown menus to place more functionality at your fingertips.

The drag handles for collection fields have been redesigned to make it clearer that they are draggable. The sidebar has also been improved and will scroll with the page when editing long forms, making it easier (and faster) to preview or publish your changes.

Release Notes

• Added support for Rails 4.x
• Added page chooser to link dialog
• Added section dropdowns with new resources underneath Manage Site dropdown
• Affixed sidebar to scroll alongside content
• Added file template content type
• Added file and file collection field types to Wheelhouse form builder
• Added Wheelhouse::Media::FileReference type
• Move Wheelhouse::Image class to Wheelhouse::Media::ImageReference (alias remains)
• Added icons to Choose Image/File buttons
• Added mobile responsive stylesheets for login forms
• Added config.wheelhouse.admin_path configuration option to set the admin root
  (defaults to "/admin")
• Added config.wheelhouse.force_ssl configuration option to force SSL within the admin
  (defaults to false)
• Added config.wheelhouse.editor configuration hash to set options to pass to TinyMCE
• Added support for subfolder hosting via relative_url_root configuration
• Allow theme stylesheets and javascripts to access files from all asset pipeline load paths
• Convert path dispatcher middleware to Rack application
• Added case-insensitive path dispatching with 301 redirect to correct case
• Improved logging of template processing errors
• Prevent duplicate URLs from appearing within the sitemap
• Fixed content field database serialization to not save dummy fields
• Updated Dragonfly dependency to 1.0
• Updated theme generator jQuery version to 1.11.0
• Updated admin jQuery version to 1.11.0
• Updated admin Backbone version to 1.1.0
• Removed support for Internet Explorer 7

As usual, run bundle update wheelhouse from within your Rails application to update to this release.

Release Notes

• Fixed a bug where content fields were cleared when switching tabs
• Fixed drag and drop file upload on Media Library drop area
• Fixed a JavaScript error when opening the Insert Media popup for the first time
• Fixed navigation helper to add child-current class even when a current child is not to be included in the navigation tree
• Fixed navigation helper to allow a node not in the navigation to be a navigation root
• Fixed Site Overview to always show a node's actual show in navigation status, regardless of its children (was previously dependent on child's show in navigation status)
• Fixed automatic path generation for pages positioned within folders
• Fixed empty selector warnings when compiling CSS files
• Fixed Google Maps media thumbnailing when using HTTPS URLs
• Update YouTube thumbnailing to support latest embed format
• Added Media Library icon for Keyhole Markup Language (KML/KMZ) files
• Added Media Library icon for presentation (PowerPoint/Keynote) files
• Added clear_breadcrumbs! class method to admin controllers
• Allow resource handler routes to set options (e.g. segment constraints)
• Apply admin table column classes to the table header
• Optimized image assets (reduced total admin assets size by ~20%)

Release Notes

• Audited gem dependencies to ensure versions are pinned to major/minor releases
• Ensure that pages with the NOINDEX meta flag set do not appear in the sitemap.xml
• Add a plugin hook (:editor) to allow plugins to add customizations to the editor JavaScript
• Fixed a bug where will_paginate was not being properly initialized
• Fixed a bug with field values containing double quotation marks
• Fixed a bug with image fields referencing the wrong image within multiple loop fields

Security Notice

A vulnerability in Dragonfly < 0.9.12 potentially allows an attacker to run arbitrary code (see here for details). If you are currently running an affected version of Dragonfly, it is strongly recommended to update as soon as possible.

Updating to Wheelhouse 1.0.17 will ensure that all dependencies are running the sufficient versions with no currently known vulnerabilities. However if you are stil on an older version of Wheelhouse, please run bundle update dragonfly and ensure that Dragonfly is updated to version 0.9.14 or higher.

I apologise for the very late notice of this vulnerability. As part of the gem audit in this release, I am tracking all dependencies closely to ensure that any future security notices are announced here as soon as possible.

Wheelhouse 1.1 Development

This will hopefully be the last release in the 1.0 branch (security updates notwithstanding). Development on the 1.1 branch is coming along nicely and most noteably includes support for Rails 4 as well as some significant UI enhancements. Stay tuned.

To mark the start of the first Australian RubyConf, Wheelhouse CMS is on sale for the duration of the conference. Until Monday 25th February all license types are available for 15% off the regular price, whether you are a conference attendee or not.

If you're at RubyConf and still trying to find the perfect content management system, I'd love to talk. You can either find me at the conference or get in touch to arrange a demo or chat.

25th February Update: Due to the success of the first ever Wheelhouse CMS sale, we're extending it for another week. Get in quick before it ends on 4th March.

Unpublish pages

In case you accidentally publish a page that wasn't ready, it is now possible to unpublish a page or other resource (such as a blog post or form).

If a page is published, the Save Draft button becomes a dropdown menu from where the page can be unpublished.

Send to top/bottom for sortable lists

Inspired by 37signals' double-click scrolling margins, double-clicking the top or bottom half of the drag handle of sortable items (such as looped template items) now sends that item to the top or bottom respectively.

Remove image selection

One small final feature to round out the three — images defined in the templates can now be removed by selecting Remove Selection from the image chooser.

This can be useful if you want to remove an optional template image from the page, such as a banner image.

If you'd like to try Wheelhouse CMS, check out the 30-day free trial (no payment details required).

In this article I'll show you how to add excerpts to your site's blog posts, a feature I've recently incorporated into a couple of my own clients' blogs.

Customizing the post template

The Wheelhouse blog plugin allows you to customize the post template for all views by overriding a single partial. To define a very basic post template, save the following as blog/_post.html.erb within your theme's templates folder:

<article class="post">
  <h3><%= post.title %></h3>
  <p class="date"><%= post.published_at.to_s(:short) %></p>

  <%= post.content %>
</article>

This template will be rendered for each post on the blog index (as well as archives, tags and category pages), as well as when viewing the post in isolation.

The current_page?(post) Rails helper can be used to determine if the user is on a post or index page. Other built-in Rails helpers can also be used, such as link_to_unless_current to only link the post title from the blog index pages.

Adding a content field for excerpts

The other important piece of the puzzle is how to define the post excerpts so that they can be edited by the post author. Wheelhouse's content area helpers give us a huge amount of flexibility here, allowing us to define editable content areas, text fields, images or a combination of these.

To define a short excerpt field, which will appear below the main post content field when editing the post, we can use the following line in the template:

<%= post.content "Excerpt", :rows => 5 %>

Bringing it all together

Combining these concepts, we end up with the following post template:

<article class="post">
  <h3><%= link_to_unless_current post.title, post %></h3>
  <p class="date"><%= post.published_at.to_s(:short) %></p>

  <% if current_page?(post) %>
    <%= post.content %>
  <% else %>
    <%= post.content "Excerpt", :rows => 5 %>
    <%= link_to "Read More", post %>
  <% end %>
</article>

Which looks like this when editing the post within the Wheelhouse admin:

Bonus: automatic excerpts

These fully custom excerpts give the post author complete control as to how the post excerpt should appear. However it requires the post author explicitly enter in the excerpt content, usually by copy and pasting the first few sentences of the post. If we are aren't fussy about the format of the excerpts and just care about their length, we can simply truncate the post content and get the excerpt for free.

Although Rails provides a built-in truncate helper, this unfortunately does not work on HTML output such as the post content. Instead we can use the truncate_html helper by adding it to the Gemfile and using the following code in the post template to produce the excerpt:

<%= truncate_html(post.content, :length => 300) %>
<%= link_to "Read More", post %>

After recently updating to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, I decided to document the process of getting set up for Ruby on Rails development with MongoDB. Fortunately the process hasn't changed too much from previous versions of Mac OS X.

1. Install Command Line Tools 10.8 for Xcode

In order to compile Ruby with RVM, as well as many Homebrew packages, you'll need a compilation toolchain. If you are doing Mac or iOS development, you may want to install Xcode in its entirety. However if you don't want the hefty Xcode (1.8GB) on your system, the Command Line Tools are a good lightweight (110MB) alternative.

The Command Line Tools installer can be downloaded here (you'll need an Apple ID). After downloading, mount the disk image and run the installer.

2. Install Ruby and Rails using RVM

Note: the following commands should be run as a non-root user (i.e. no sudo).

To install the latest stable version of RVM, run the following from a terminal window:

$ curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable

Close and reopen the terminal window. Then install the latest Ruby version with:

$ rvm install 1.9.3

You can confirm this has installed correctly by running:

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.9.3p327 (2012-11-10) [x86_64-darwin12.2.0]

Before installing any gems, I generally disable the slow and unnecessary RDoc and RI generation by creating a ~/.gemrc file with the following:

install: --no-ri --no-rdoc
update: --no-ri --no-rdoc

Then we can install and verify Rails with the following commands:

$ gem install rails
$ rails -v
Rails 3.2.9

3. Install Homebrew & XQuartz (X11)

Homebrew is my preferred way of managing packages in OS X. Homebrew compiles most packages from source and keeps everything nicely managed within /usr/local. It can be installed by running:

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSkL raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

X11, which is required for packages such as ImageMagick, was previously bundled with Mac OS X. It is still maintained, but no longer ships with the OS, instead available as XQuartz.

Download XQuartz 2.7.4, mount the disk image and run the installer, as with the Command Line Tools.

4. Install MongoDB

Finally, we can install MongoDB using Homebrew:

$ brew install mongodb
$ mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
$ cp /usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/2.2.2-x86_64/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
$ launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mongodb.plist

This will load MongoDB automatically on login, and start it for the first time. We can verify MongoDB is installed correctly by loading the console:

$ mongo
MongoDB shell version: 2.2.2
connecting to: test
>

Wheelhouse CMS can now be evaluated for a period of 30 days with no credit card or payment details necessary. In addition to this free trial period, our 30-day, no questions asked refund policy isn't going anywhere, so you have even longer to try it out risk-free.

So what are you waiting for? Start your free trial now!

It's worth upgrading to Rails 3.2 if only for the improved development mode reloading, which leads to significantly faster response times whilst you are building your themes and plugins.

To upgrade to Wheelhouse 1.0.1 and Rails 3.2, simply update the following versions in your Gemfile:

gem 'rails', '3.2.1'

gem 'wheelhouse'

group :assets do
  gem 'sass-rails', '~> 3.2.4'
  gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 3.2.2'
  gem 'uglifier', '~> 1.2.3'
end

Then run bundle update, restart your rails server and you're good to go.

I began developing Wheelhouse CMS out of a long-standing frustration with existing content management platforms. In most cases, CMSs today tend to be painful to build web sites in, or simply not something I'd feel good about delivering to my clients (due to poor usability, security, etc.)

Wheelhouse CMS aims to do better.

Wheelhouse is built on top of Ruby on Rails 3.1 and takes full advantage of great new features such as the asset pipeline. Haml (for templates) and Sass (for CSS) are also fully supported as well as the Compass extensions for Sass.

Wheelhouse content fields enable you to create templates that give your clients full control, but won't fall apart if they make a mistake while editing. The easy-to-use admin area and editor will mean your clients won't have any troubles managing their content.

These clients are already happily using Wheelhouse CMS to manage their sites.

Check out the Demo Site to try out Wheelhouse CMS for yourself today!

In the mean time, you can check out the new Wheelhouse CMS Demo Site for a sneak peak.

The Site Administrator's Guide is intended to be the main user guide for Wheelhouse CMS, suitable for developers, designers and clients to get up to speed on using the Wheelhouse admin and managing content. If you notice any typos, omissions or errors, please let me know.

In other news, with the recent release of Rails 3.1, Wheelhouse CMS is now fully compatible with both Rails 3.1 as well as the Heroku cloud hosting platform. All of the details on how to set up Wheelhouse on Heroku will be published in the coming weeks.

The recent redesign of Rooftop Media, produced by Demarchi Design is a perfect example of this:

Although it's not a large site, the layouts of the home page and interior pages differ significantly. The home page features a large banner image and short columns of text, whereas the interior pages include a second level of navigation and a larger main content area with some featured projects below.

For a content management system, this presents a challenge in how the editing forms for each piece of content are presented to the user. Wheelhouse uses a template-driven approach that automatically builds the forms based on definitions within the templates.

What does this mean and how does it work in practice?

When you create a page in Wheelhouse, it is assigned a default template from your current theme (or you can select from any of the other templates that the theme provides). Wheelhouse reads the chosen template looking for content definitions (content, text, images and loops) and then automatically builds the form for content editing.

Here's how the columns section of the home page template looks:

<div class="callout left">
  <%= @page.content("Left Column", :rows => 20) %>
</div>

<div class="callout middle">
  <%= @page.content("Middle Column", :rows => 20) %>
</div>

<div class="callout right">
  <%= @page.content("Right Column", :rows => 20) %>
</div> 

I'm using ERB in these examples but Haml is also supported (and is highly recommended).

The name and options passed to @page.content provide hints to Wheelhouse as to how to render the editing controls. Wheelhouse provides options to customize the field label, editor size, default value, help notice as well as the CSS used by the editor.

In the interior page template we do something similar but accept the default values:

<div id="content">
  <%= @page.content %>
</div>

 These examples produce WYSIWYG editor controls such as those in the screenshot below:

For short single-lines of text (e.g. a section title), we can use the @page.text content method to generate simple text fields, complete with a default value and a note for the content creator.

<h2>
  <%= @page.text "Section Title",
                 :note => "Short explanatory notice.",
                 :default => "Default Title" %>
</h2>

which creates the following field in the form:

Images and looped content

Just like text content, images also receive first-class treatment in Wheelhouse CMS. Although images can be added to normal text content using the WYSIWYG editor, there are times when you as a template developer will want more control over how images are positioned and sized.

Wheelhouse provides the @page.image content method to place an image at any point within the template, allowing the content creator to choose the image from the Media Library. The width and/or height can also be specified in the template and the image will be resized accordingly.

The banner image for the Rooftop Media home page can be defined in the template as:

<div id="banner">
  <%= @page.image "Banner", :width => 830 %>
</div>

This provides an image selector in the editing form that looks like this:

The final template content construct in Wheelhouse is the loop, which is used to create repeating items with a common structure, such as the portfolio pieces and featured projects in the Rooftop Media portfolio. It's also fantastic for creating simple slideshows and galleries, without the need for any additional plugins.

Any of the content, text or image methods described above can be used inside a loop. To illustrate, here's roughly how the featured projects are done:

<% @page.loop("Featured Projects") do |project| %>
  <div class="project">
    <%= project.image :width => 212, :height => 141 %>
 
    <div class="content">
      <%= project.content :rows => 10 %>
    </div>
  </div>
<% end %>

And here's how it looks within the editing form, with two items already added:

All of these template methods enable you to create easy-to-use editing forms (no matter how complex your templates get) that are far less prone to user error. You can say goodbye to panicked calls from clients saying they've mucked up the layout.

What's more, these template methods aren't limited to normal pages but can also be used on blog posts, forms and your own custom resource types.

So when will it be ready?

The final finishing touches are currently being added, including updating Wheelhouse to support Rails 3.1 (and the brand new asset pipeline). I'm also hard at work writing documentation for administrators and developers (include all the details for everything we covered in this post and much more), with the Site Administrator's Guide coming early next week.

There's no hard release date set (it'll be ready when it's ready) but there's definitely not long to go now.

Horvath Homes are a premier home builder based in Napier, New Zealand and needed a web site that could show off their show homes, home & land packages, and various home plans. They also needed a way to easily update their ever-changing selection of available homes, as well as their other web site content.

Designer Kristin Baylis was able to use Wheelhouse CMS to produce a rich, interactive web site, easily integrating slideshows, galleries and contact forms using Wheelhouse plugins and templates. A custom plugin was built to enable searching of home plans by various criteria including home size, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, garages and storeys.

Wheelhouse CMS lets Horvath Homes control every aspect of their web site. Every piece of content and every image is editable via the easy-to-use admin interface.

Visit Horvath Homes to see what Wheelhouse CMS can do for your business.

I started building Wheelhouse primarily to scratch my own itch. I found the current crop of content management systems leave a huge amount to be desired - either they're immensely painful to build web sites with, or they're difficult for ordinary clients (as well as myself) to use.

Wheelhouse was born out of this frustration, and I've found I'm not the only one to have this problem - the seemingly impossible quest to find a CMS that is both powerful and enjoyable to develop with, and which will empower my clients to manage their sites with minimal help and guidance.

After many months in development, Wheelhouse has finally matured to the point where it achieves exactly this. Thanks to the companies participating in the Wheelhouse beta, Wheelhouse is now powering 11 production sites, with at least 5 more to be released soon.

In just a few months time, Wheelhouse will also be able to power your web site and those of your clients. Keep checking this blog or subscribe to be notified of updates.

I'll also be posting up some screencasts and tips for existing Wheelhouse users, so stay tuned.