Embedding Roller in web pages

[John Langan <la...@homes.com>]

Congratulations on the release of Roller 4.0. It looks good. 

We want to use Roller to provide blogging to our customers. Does Roller have
to run stand alone or can we incorporate it into our web site so customers
can use it within our JSP pages and without leaving our site?

If so, are there any examples or guides on incorporating Roller into a web
site?

John.

Re: Embedding Roller in web pages

[Stephen Winnall <st...@winnall.ch>]

I have done this for my company's website, which will be online Real  
Soon Now. My web server is Cocoon, though, and I hacked together a new  
Roller template which Cocoon could process (i.e. something XML based)  
and let Cocoon do the formatting. It works reasonably well, though I  
don't use all the functionality of Roller yet, so some things may  
actually not be possible with this approach - I don't know yet.

I have a Tomcat running the Cocoon and Roller instances and an HTTPD  
front-ending them.

Modifying the basic Roller template was fairly straightforward, though  
you may need to change some of the underlying Java/JSP stuff,  
depending on what you're trying to do. However, I will admit to not  
liking Velocity very much, which is what the templates are coded in.  
It would be neat if Roller had a straight XML interface for this sort  
of stuff.

The other major issue is mapping the Roller URL space onto your  
company's scheme. I do some of this with URL rewriting in HTTPD and  
other bits are handled by Cocoon.

My experience of JSP is limited, so I imagine that a similar scheme  
would work.

Steve

On 7 Dec 2007, at 14:44, John Langan wrote:

> Congratulations on the release of Roller 4.0. It looks good.
>
> We want to use Roller to provide blogging to our customers. Does  
> Roller have
> to run stand alone or can we incorporate it into our web site so  
> customers
> can use it within our JSP pages and without leaving our site?
>
> If so, are there any examples or guides on incorporating Roller into  
> a web
> site?
>
> John.
>
>

RE: Embedding Roller in web pages

[John Langan <la...@homes.com>]

Hi Dave,
Thanks for the advice, which helps us see how to proceed.

John.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave [mailto:snoopdave@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 4:44 PM
To: user@roller.apache.org
Subject: Re: Embedding Roller in web pages

On Dec 7, 2007 8:44 AM, John Langan <la...@homes.com> wrote:
> Congratulations on the release of Roller 4.0. It looks good.
>
> We want to use Roller to provide blogging to our customers. Does Roller
have
> to run stand alone or can we incorporate it into our web site so customers
> can use it within our JSP pages and without leaving our site?

Roller is a Java web application, so you could deploy it along side
your existing Java applications. You probably wouldn't want to "use it
within our JSP pages" because then you lose important features like
permalinks, pagers, caching, etc. But you can create custom Roller
pages, add additional sources of data to Roller templates, post to
Roller via web services, etc.

I don't have any specific examples to mention, but if you have some
ideas for integrations I'd be happy to comment about their
feasibility/desirability.

- Dave

Re: Embedding Roller in web pages

[Dave <sn...@gmail.com>]

On Dec 7, 2007 8:44 AM, John Langan <la...@homes.com> wrote:
> Congratulations on the release of Roller 4.0. It looks good.
>
> We want to use Roller to provide blogging to our customers. Does Roller have
> to run stand alone or can we incorporate it into our web site so customers
> can use it within our JSP pages and without leaving our site?

Roller is a Java web application, so you could deploy it along side
your existing Java applications. You probably wouldn't want to "use it
within our JSP pages" because then you lose important features like
permalinks, pagers, caching, etc. But you can create custom Roller
pages, add additional sources of data to Roller templates, post to
Roller via web services, etc.

I don't have any specific examples to mention, but if you have some
ideas for integrations I'd be happy to comment about their
feasibility/desirability.

- Dave