Detailed installation and configuration - blojsom - Confluence

Installation instructions

These installation instructions reflect blojsom 2.x.

If you are installing blojsom 3.0, visit the blojsom 3 site where there are specific installation instructions for that version of blojsom.

Download the blojsom WAR file.
Unpack blojsom.war using Java's JAR program into a directory under where the application server will be running blojsom. Under Tomcat, this might be $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/blojsom. In this case, the servlet context for blojsom will be "blojsom". The following command will unpack the blojsom.war file.

jar xvf blojsom.war

Configure the /WEB-INF/blojsom.properties file which contains global properties for blojsom.

You must provide one user id for the blojsom-users and blojsom-default-user properties.

The following configuration parameters are configured in /WEB-INF/blojsom.properties.

Configuration parameter	Default value	Usage
blojsom-users		Comma-separated list of users with blogs for this blojsom installation. This list will be used to initialize the individual blogs. NOTE: You can also list each user on a separate line using the `blojsom-users` property.
blojsom-default-user		This option provides legacy blojsom (i.e. pre 2.0) installations a way of preserving their current installations. Set the name of the default user from one of the blog ids in the `blojsom-users` property. The default user will not have to enter their blog id in the URL for the blojsom installation to request their blog. For example, http://localhost:8080/blojsom/blog/ would point to the blog of the default user where http://localhost:8080/blojsom/blog/david/ would point to the blog for the user david.
blojsom-blog-home		Directory that will be used for storing blogs (categories and entries) for each user. If this property begins with a {, blojsom assumes that a } will follow and uses the contents to retrieve a system property. After that it will append everything after the } and use that as the value for this parameter. For example: `blojsom-blog-home={user.home}/blogs/` would expand the {user.home} property (let's say it resolves to `/home/tomcat4`) and use `/home/tomcat4/blogs/` as the value for this property.
blojsom-configuration-base-directory	/WEB-INF/	Directory off the blojsom installation directory where blojsom will look for certain configuration files and blog directories.
blojsom-fetcher	`org.blojsom.fetcher.StandardFetcher`	Fully qualified class name of the BlojsomFetcher class responsible for "fetching" blog categories and entries
blojsom-templates-directory	/templates/	This parameter will be used by blojsom to generate the proper path from which to retrieve the page templates for the individual blogs. For example, in a default blojsom installation, requesting the default flavor (HTML) for the default blog would cause the dispatcher to look for `/WEB-INF/default/templates/html.vm`.
blojsom-resource-manager	`org.blojsom.util.resources.ResourceBundleResourceManager`	This parameter will be used by blojsom to retrieve resources that are used in localizing parts of the interface such as the administration console.
blojsom-resource-manager-bundles		A comma-separated list of resource bundles that the resource manager should load on initialization.
blojsom-resource-directory	/resources/	blojsom uses this parameter to create a directory off of the installation directory. Under this directory, a directory will be created for each blog using their blog id, where resources will be stored for individual blogs. This is used in the MetaWeblog API handler and by the File Upload plugin.
blojsom-authorization-provider	`org.blojsom.authorization.PropertiesAuthorizationProvider`	Authorization provider used for this blojsom instance. The default loads authorization information from the blog's `authorization.properties` file.
blojsom-broadcaster	`org.blojsom.event.SimpleBlojsomEventBroadcaster`	Event broadcaster to use for this blojsom instance.

If you have added users to the blojsom-users property, you will need to create directories off the directory indicated in blojsom-configuration-base-directory for each of the users. It is recommended that you initially create another user and copy all of the directories and files from the default user directory into this new user's directory. You would then set the blojsom-default-user property to the appropriate user id you just created and remove the default user id from the blojsom-users configuration property. This allows you to keep the default user directory as a set of template directories and files when adding new users to your blojsom installation.
Authorized users are added to an blog's /WEB-INF/(blog-id)/authorization.properties file. The usernames and passwords in this file control the users that can access the individual blog either via the administration console or XML-RPC. The format of this file is as follows.
```
username=password,\{optional e-mail address}
```
Each separate line represents an individual username and password combination. You may associate an e-mail address with the username by adding a "," and the username's e-mail address. The e-mail address is used to send the username an e-mail message if they forget their password. If the e-mail address is not present, the username is assumed to be associated with the blog owner and therefore an e-mail message in this case would be sent to the blog owner's e-mail address.

Edit the permissions file located in $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/blojsom/WEB-INF/default/permissions.properties. This file specifies the users permissions on the individual blog. The format of this file is as follows.
```
username=permission
```
Each separate line represents an individual username and permission combination. The permissions page describes more on individual permissions for blojsom components.

Configure the appropriate /WEB-INF/(blog-id)/blog.properties file for your blog. This will need to be done for each of the users that you have indicated in the blojsom-users property. If you have setup a user to access the administration console, then you should only need to configure the blog-home property, after which you can configure the other properties through the administration console.

The following configuration parameters can be found in /WEB-INF/(blog-id)/blog.properties.

Configuration parameter	Default value	Usage
blog-home		Points to the directory where your blog entries will be located For example: /my/home/directory/blog NOTE This parameter should point to the absolute directory where your blog entries will be kept. It should exist outside the web application root directory.
blog-directory-depth	-1	Indicates the number of levels deep that blojsom should traverse in `blog-home` to look for entries. A value of -1 indicates that blojsom should traverse all directories.
blog-language	en	Indicates the language code for this blog. This parameter is used when generating RSS feeds for your blog.
blog-country	US	Indicates the country code for this blog.
blog-name		The name of your blog.
blog-description		A concise description of your blog.
blog-base-url		Base URL for your blog For example: http://localhost:8080/blojsom
blog-url		URL for your blog. This URL should include the appropriate user id otherwise links will be generated for the default user's blog. For example: http://localhost:8080/blojsom/blog/david/ NOTE The default servlet-mapping configured in the `/WEB-INF/web.xml` for blojsom is set to pass all requests for /blog/* to blojsom. If you change the mapping in the `/WEB-INF/web.xml` file, then you will need to make sure that change is reflected in the URL for your blog.
blog-file-extensions		Comma-separated list of regular expressions to identify file extensions blojsom uses for blog entries. By default, blojsom will look for .txt and .html file extensions in the blog directories for entries.
blog-entry-meta-data-extension		File extension that blojsom should look for if using per-entry meta-data. This feature is described in the customization reference.
blog-properties-extensions		File extensions that blojsom should look for in the blog category directories. Any properties files discovered when loading the blog from disk will be used as meta-data for the current category. This feature is described in the customization reference.
blog-entries-display	-1	Sets the maximum number of display entries per category. If this value is -1, all entries will be displayed. This parameter also controls the number of entries that get aggregated for individual categories if requesting the default or "/" category.
blog-default-category-mapping		Customize the blog directories that will be "aggregated" to the default or "/" category. If left blank, all directories, up to `blog-directory-depth` will be aggregated. This feature is described on the category aggregation page. This is a comma-separated list of the category names that will be shown.
blog-default-category-exclusion-mapping		Customize the blog directories that will be excluded from the default or "/" category. This would allow you to show all but a certain set of categories. This is a comma-separated list of the category names that will be excluded.
blog-directory-filter		Comma-separated list of regular expressions of directory names that blojsom should filter when looking for categories. By default, the comments and trackback directories are added to this list.
blog-owner		Identifies the name of the blog owner.
blog-owner-email		Identifies the e-mail address of the blog owner.
blog-comments-enabled		Indicates whether or not comments are enabled on this blog. Can be either true or false. See comments page for more information on comments.
blog-comments-directory	.comments	The directory where blog comments will be written to under the blog category directories. This directory is automatically added to the list of directories that get filtered.
blog-trackbacks-enabled		Indicates whether or not trackbacks are enabled on this blog. Can be either true or false. See trackbacks page for more information on trackbacks.
blog-trackbacks-directory	.trackbacks	The directory where blog trackbacks will be written to under the blog category directories. This directory is automatically added to the list of directories that get filtered.
blog-email-enabled	false	Indicates whether or not comments and trackbacks will be e-mailed to the blog owner. Can be either true or false.
blog-file-encoding	UTF-8	File encoding for reading and writing blog entries/comments/trackbacks.
blog-blacklist-file		Points to the file containing the blacklist regular expressions.
blog-xmlrpc-entry-extension	.html	File extension used by the XML-RPC extension when writing entries to disk.
blog-banned-ip-addresses		Comma-separated list of regular expressions IP addresses that you would like to be banned. Presently, this is only used by the Comment and Trackback plugins.
blog-default-flavor	html	Sets the default flavor used to render the blog if not specified.
blog-ping-urls		URLs separated by a space that will populate the ping URLs automatically when adding or editing blog entries.
linear-navigation-enabled	false	Indicates whether or not linear post navigation is enabled on this blog. Can either be true or false.

Start your application server. On startup, blojsom will log messages to the console to indicate what it is doing. Configuring blojsom's log capability is described on the customization page.
Start your browser and open the URL to your blog. Example: http://localhost:8080/blojsom/blog/. The default user's blog should show up in your browser. If you have created other users, you can browse their blogs by including the appropriate user id at the end of this blog URL. Now you're ready to create categories and entries for your blog.
If you have setup authorized user's for your individual blog(s), you will then be able to administer and configure blojsom using the web-based administration console. You can access the administration console of your blog by adding ?flavor=admin to the URL when accessing your blog, as shown in the following figure.