FlatPress is an extensible blogging system, standard compliant, and compatible with the SPB db.

Sorry ;) we're thinking about doing miracles, but we're still not ready.

I will never repeat this enough. FlatPress IS NOT “WordPress on flat files”. WordPress plugins usually DON'T work in FlatPress. Anyway sometimes you are just a few lines away from making them work :) In fact, many of the bundled filters on the text are from WP. Themes have just nothing to do with WP, so not at all.

Maintaining packages for all the OS's is quite complicated. Why shouldn't I provide a .sit for MACs, then? Bzip2 has a great compression for text files and you can easiliy expand it on every platform.

On Windows I'd suggest the opensource 7-zip or the freeware tug-zip which are free and will give you access to many other compression formats such as rar and tar.gz beside tar.bz2.

If you'll use one of these apps, packages won't stand on my nerves and I will have much more time to work at the development ;)

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBCode

See: bbcode

Using this great class: StringParser_BBCode

Usually is just a matter of copying you content/ and images/ into your fp-content/ directory. I'd anyway suggest you to convert you're entries to the UTF-8 encoding (see next question).

Maybe you didn't convert them from iso-8859-15 to utf-8 Please have a look here: http://spbitalia.altervista.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=491 You can always choose a different encoding from the Admin Panel (Config), but I always suggest the conversion. UTF-8 allows you to enter in you page characters for every known language. More info on http://unicode.org/.

If you are trying to convert your files after you already installed FP, please delete the files in fp-content/cache/

If you have this issue with just a few characters, system may fail sometimes with a few of them: it's a matter of a very few cases and particular situations. Just edit the entry with the problem, fix the character, and, once saved, you should never see this again.

Blocks in FP are very different from the ones you used to see in SPB. If you want to create a text sidebar block as you used to do in SPB the procedure may look a little more complicated, but really it's a little price to pay to get a much, much more versatile system.

In FP, create a new static page (see below) and choose a name for it (not the title, I'm talking about the little text box at the bottom of the editor) and choose a name you like. For instance, “myblock”. Save your static page, and then go to the Widget panel.

Now insert a new blockparser where you want your block to appear. Blockparser is the plugin which parses (i.e. reads) a static page and treats it as the content of a block. syntax for the widget config:

// [...] here would be preceding lines
     'pluginname', // this is an old widget
     'blockparser:myblock', // this is a block created using the widget blockparser, parsing \"myblock\" static page
// [...] // lines that follow

so 'blockparser:STATICNAME' : blockparser column name of the static pahe, all between single quotes.

Save the config, you should see it after the next page refresh (click any link).

See also here http://spbitalia.altervista.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=3429#p3429 (ITA)

A Widget is a dynamic component displayed (depending on the theme and on your config) on a topbar, on the right sidebar (default), etc. With “dynamic component” we mean a plugin providing a special interface (the widget function) designed to print content on the page when called. We called them “widget” and not “blocks” because we see blocks as passive elements which just display content, while widgets (which are php-coded as the common plugins) can of course execute code. A widget can then provide more advanced functions than just displaying a list of links (for which I'd suggest the static+blockparser combo), you may for instance have a widget fetching a displaying an rss feed from an external web page. The only limit is what php can do :)

A static page is an entry completely unlinked from the normal blog entry flux and that can't be commented. It can be reached using the file name you chose when you save it as a parameter for the URL; for instance if you choose MY_PAGE as a file name (not as a title!) you will be able to access your page using http://mysite.com/flatpress/static.php?page=MY_PAGE Where are my static page linked? How do I show them out?

SPB creates automatically a list of the static pages you have; however we decided to let the user decide wether to link or not his static page, and this without complex interfaces: just create another static page with your own list of links and bind it to a blockparser widget for instance:

[list]
[*][url=static.php?page=MY_PAGE]My Page[/url]
[*][url=static.php?page=ANOTHER_PAGE]Another Page[/url]
[/list]

Add the corresponding plugin both to the plugin list and to the widget list in the section and at the position you want it to go.

Widgets are organized in groups or bars; every bar can contain any number of widgets. These bars are then displayed on the theme using the special tag {widget pos=BAR} where BAR is the name of the bar.

Generally in themes you have one ore more predefined widget bars. Usually you have at least the right bar; a lot of themes display both the contents of the left and of the right bar even if they actually have one single column of widgets (they show them together, one group after the other).

To add a new widget you add its plugin name to the plugin list in the panel, and the choose one of the groups and add the plugin name to the list as well. As you saw in the blockparser example, some widget may expect you to provide some parameters as well.

As we said, Widgets are special plugins providing a widget function; by the way FlatPress does not know where you want it to appear, so, once a plugin widget is loaded, you should enable it in the widget panel as well (see the previous question).

The short answer is no.

You should better ask “can I have more than one user?”. In this case the answer is “yes, but it's not supported” :D

Actually you can run the installer multiple times; if you choose a different username for each time you run the setup, the old user won't be deleted, and so you'll get one user for each time you run the setup.

The drawbacks in this are that every user has administrative powers and there is little or no checks on probable race conditions: for instance, if two you are editing two posts at the same time, strange things may happen: FP may for instance not show one of the posts (clean the cache from the Maintenance panel); if two of you are editing the same posts, the changes of the first to post will be probably lost, overwritten by the changes the other did (no fix for this at the moment).

Of course, working on this is on my todo; you might expect to see something more in a few months…

Because I'm evil !

Delete %%setup.lock from fp-content/ backup your fp-content/config/ if you heavily customized FlatPress and then restart setup (point to index.php or setup.php); once asked create a user with the same username of the old one and it will be overwritten. Restore your config/ dir backup once done.

First of all, think of it twice. Done? Think again. :D Is it really a bug or a non-implemented-feature? A bug is behavior you wouldn't expect. For instance if you save an entry and then it's displayed in a wrong order, that's a bug. You can contact. But first check whether you have the latest release installed. If not, upgrade and check again if it's still there. Otherwise, if you save your entry and then you wonder why it's not playing banjo in the meantime, that's probably a non-implemented feature. NOTE: the playing banjo is not a short-term feature, we're busy teaching FlatPress how to do a good espresso coffee. FP wants it the American-way.

You can buy me two!