ServerZen.Net

Setting Up TextPress

With the new packages I’ve setup, setting up a TextPress instance is quite easy (but please be warned that this is pre-alpha software not yet released by the maintainers).

Here are the steps to get started assuming a unix shell like bash.

1. Start by creating an isolated environment using something like virtualenv. I won’t bore you with instructions on setting up virtualenv here.

   $ python virtualenv.py textpress-app
   $ source textpress-app/bin/activate
   (textpress-app)$
   

2. Next step is to install the pre-packaged TextPress provided by me.

   (textpress-app)$ easy_install -i http://dist.serverzen.com/textpress/latest/simple/ TextPress
   

1. Python2.4 users (Python2.5 users skip this step) will additionally need to install wsgiref and pysqlite:

   (textpress-app)$ easy_install wsgiref
   (textpress-app)$ easy_install pysqlite
   

3. Now that the software is installed, lets setup a place to hold our actual blog instances.

   (textpress-app)$ mkdir blog-instances
   (textpress-app)$ cd blog-instances
   

4. And now lets run our first blog instance.

   (textpress-app)$ mkdir myblog
   (textpress-app)$ TEXTPRESS_INSTANCE=myblog textpress-manage runserver
   

5. After the server has been successfully started, use the web browser to configure the first blog instance by following the step-by-step wizard.

   1. choose your language (english for purposes of this discussion), “next”
   2. specify “sqlite:///database.db” as Database to store all data in the file “database.db” relative to the myblog directory, “next”
   3. fill in first user information (username, password, email) “next”
   4. and finally “install”

Your new test blog should be up and running. Check out the TextPress wiki for more information on how to use TextPress. But those familiar with WordPress should feel at home.

Update: The fact that this is pre-alpha software means that newer updates and releases might not migrate your data properly so some manual massaging may be necessary.