Lyceum 1.0.1

Lyceum 1.0.1 is out the door. Thanks to 1.0 users who reported bugs and suggestions.

Bugs that have been fixed include charset specification on the login page, which was crucial for i11n users, placement of the Akismet dialogue box, and a few incorrect links.

A new feature in this release is the ability to specify whether new blogs are populated with an example post and an example page, and what the text of said post and page will be. In addition, if a blog has no posts, now instead of a 404 message, there will be a friendlier message suggesting that the user write their first post (if the user is logged in and has authorship privileges) or visit the portal to see other content on the site. See an example here.

Please note the two new configuration constants in wp-config-sample.php. It is important that you add these to your wp-config.php after upgrading your code.

Get it via SVN or as a .tar.gz from the downloads page.

Report bugs and feature suggestions on trac.

Get help on the support forums, email lists, or IRC channel.

Lyceum mentioned on Web 2.0 TV

My buddy Thomas Tucker was doing interviews for Web 2.0 TV all day at the Innotech trade show, and when interviewing William Hurley made a not-so-subtle reference to Lyceum. Sweet!

If the player isn’t working for you, you can view the video directly here.

Bug fixed in 1.0, and join the lyceum-users list

Lyceum 1.0 has a minor but, for those it affects, nasty bug: link categories cannot be created. This has been fixed with this changeset:

http://source.ibiblio.org/trac/lyceum/changeset/1230

Which will be included in Lyceum 1.0.1, which will be released in a couple weeks.

On that note, I’d like to take this opportunity to point out the value of joining the lyceum-users email list. This bug fix was reported to the lyceum-users list immediately after it was committed. This list is for those who are installing and administrating Lyceum. It is not for, as its name may imply, “end-users” using Lyceum to blog.

Screencast: Installing Lyceum

In the first Lyceum screencast I show how to download, configure, and install Lyceum.

Screenshot of Installing Lyceum screencast

Installing Lyceum (.mov, 8.2MB)

The screencast mentions some directories which need to be writable by the web server. These directories are listed on the wiki.

Lyceum 1.0

We are extremely proud and excited to announce Lyceum 1.0. We’ll be talking more about the larger Lyceum landscape over the next several days. For now, here’s a list of improvements since 0.34:

  • Synchronized with WordPress 2.0.11
  • Even greater plugin and theme compatibility with WordPress
  • Improved and expanded search functionality
  • System-wide Atom feed of blog posts
  • Vastly improved interface for assigning permissions to users
  • More complete set of system-admin tools for managing users and blogs
  • Ability to restrict number of blogs a user can create
  • Refined admin interface layout
  • Refined default portal page
  • Performance optimizations, some of them very significant for large installations
  • Bundled plugins: Creative Commons wpLicense, Lyceumified Akismet
  • Dozens of bug fixes

Get it via SVN or as a .tar.gz from the downloads page.

Report bugs and feature suggestions on trac.

Get help on the support forums, email lists, or IRC channel.

Much thanks to everyone who has contributed to Lyceum over the years. Dozens of code submissions, hundreds of bug submissions and feature suggestions, great conversations on IRC, email, and the forums, have all made Lyceum the powerful tool that it is today.

And we’re just getting started :-D