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Statik - a content editing system

The Elevator Pitch (tl;dr)

A very simple content editing system.

  1. Get a web designer to make you a website (in HTML, CSS and maybe some JavaScript)
  2. Copy the website into Statik, and change the content whenever you want, immediately.
  3. ...
  4. Profit!

In a bit more detail

Generally, content managed websites require the designer to build the code in "Wordpress", or "FreeMarker", or "Smarty templates". And that makes sense for great big sites with thousands of pages and complicated features.

But what if you've got a few pages of HTML and you'd just like, as the owner of a site you paid someone to design for you, to change the words on them sometimes? Generally it's hard. You either have to know HTML, or pay someone. And if you're a designer, and you want to make a site content managed - then again, you're back to writing-it-in-Wordpress, instead of working in your favourite tools of HTML and CSS.

Statik lets you copy a static site into a directory on the server (probably using FTP, like back in the day), where it serves from, just like Apache. Except, whenever you want to, you can fire a browser at http://website/edit, punch in a username and password, and live-edit the content on the page.

That's it.

Features

  • Works with any static website
  • WYSIWYG content editing
  • Supports multiple authors
  • Serves a single website per instance of Statik (each instance should be configured with a unique fileBase and MongoDB database name)
  • Right click on elements (paragraphs, list items, anchors) to edit
  • Can run in an installed servlet container (Tomcat, Jetty etc) or standalone as an executable JAR

Status

It works. It's got a couple of bugs. Try it out and gimme feedback, please!

Prerequisites

To build:

  • Java 7
  • Maven 3
  • Firefox (to run the acceptance tests)

To run:

  • Java 7
  • MongoDB or MySQL
  • a website, expressed as a set of static .html files, CSS, JavaScript, images etc.

Development setup

Get the code

git clone https://github.com/rorygibson/statik.git

Build (defaults to webapp packaging)

cd statik
mvn -DfileBase=$PWD/demo-website clean install

Run locally in Jetty (port 8080)

cd statik
mvn -DfileBase=$PWD/demo-website jetty:run-war

Build (as standalone uber-jar for non-servlet-container deployment)

cd statik
mvn clean install -Pstandalone

Run locally as standalone service (default port 4567) with defaulted configuration and a specified filebase

cd statik
java -DfileBase=$PWD/demo-website -jar target/statik-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar

Run locally with a custom config file and custom port (8080)

cd statik
java -Dconfig.filename=/etc/statik-config.properties -Dport=8080 -jar target/statik-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar

## Site Layout Statik expects a single directory root, known as the ''fileBase'' to be supplied (vic configuration properties, see below). This directory can include multiple sub-directories, each representing a distinct website (and sharing login via SSO for editing).

<fileBase>
    |- www.example.com
    |- www.foobar.com

The directories should be named as per the actual names they'll be deployed on; Statik uses the hostname from the request to dispatch the corect content. One of these sites is known as the ''auth domain'', and is the domain name to which authors will be redirected while logging in, to provide single-sign-on across the sites in an instance of Statik.

Example: local development

Directory layout:

<fileBase>
    |- localhost
    |- my-dev-site.localhost

''authDomain'' property - "localhost"

And then tweak your ''/etc/hosts'' to add 127.0.0.1 my-dev-site.localhost

And add some Apache config;

<VirtualHost *:*>
    ProxyPreserveHost On
    ProxyPass / http://localhost:4567/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:4567/
    ServerName my-dev-site.localhost
</VirtualHost>

Example: QA

Directory layout:

<fileBase>
    |- my-qa-site-1.myagency.com
    |- my-qa-site-2.myagency.com
    |- my-qa-site-3.myagency.com

''authDomain'' property - "my-qa-site-2.myagency.com" Set up DNS and domains as appropriate. And add some Apache config (e.g.):

<VirtualHost *:*>
    ProxyPreserveHost On
    ProxyPass / http://localhost:4567/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:4567/
    ServerName my-qa-site-1.myagency.com
</VirtualHost>

Example: production

Directory layout:

<fileBase>
    |- www.myeshop.com
    |- www.myevenbetterstore.com
    |- www.supershoppingexperience.com

''authDomain'' property - "www.myevenbetterstore.com" Plus Apache config as above - or Varnish - and possibly with the proxy running on a spearate VM to the CMS.

Production setup (Tomcat)

Example instructions (for e.g. Tomcat servlet container)

  • Obtain the WAR file
  • Make sure it's called ROOT.war (rename if necessary)
  • Copy the ROOT.war file to the deployment directory ($CATALINA_HOME/webapps)
  • Create a config.properties file in the $HOME directory of the user running Tomcat
  • Copy your website static files to the directory specified in your config.properties (see Site Layout)
  • Make sure MongoDB is running (and on the port specified in config.properties)
  • Start Tomcat (./bin/startup.sh)

Production setup (standalone)

Example instructions

  • Obtain the JAR file
  • Copy the JAR file to the deployment directory
  • Create a config.properties file in a known location
  • Copy your website static files to the directory specified in your config.properties (see Site Layout)
  • Make sure MySQL is running with a database created and a user granted access
  • Create an init script (/etc/init.d/statik ?) with the usual features for running a Java process

Example config.properties (see example-config.properties for a documented version)

jdbc.driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
jdbc.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/statik
jdbc.username=statik
jdbc.password=statik
port=8080
fileBase=/home/bob/statik-websites/my-first-website
welcomeFile=index.html
authDomain=www.example.com