Author

Jochem Kossen

Imposter is a weblog application, written in Python, utilizing Flask, Werkzeug, Jinja2 and SQLAlchemy.

copyright

3. 2010-2011 by Jochem Kossen <jochem.kossen@gmail.com>

license

two-clause BSD

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

• Imposter consists of small but functional separated admin and frontend applications. In the future a separate api and frontend user interaction app is planned. See also Ideas behind the separation of apps
• Posts can be edited in ReST, Markdown or HTML code. This is a per-post option.
• Tag support
• Theme support (Jinja2 is used for templates)
• Supports various databases (everything SQLAlchemy supports)
• Simple to read, understand and hack code (and there's not a whole lot of it)

• Since the frontend app does not write to the data sources, there is NO support for comments. The current plan is to develop a separate app for frontend user interaction that will deal with this.

  I currently recommend using a service such as those provided by http://disqus.com or http://intensedebate.com

• You can easily run the admin on HTTPS while the front-end runs on HTTP
• You can easily run the admin on a private LAN while the front-end runs on public servers
• The frontend and public_api app don't need write permissions since they don't manipulate data
• Performance: front-end can be optimized for viewing content, admin for changing content
• Run multiple front-ends to distribute load
• Stability: problems with the admin should not cause problems in the front-end and vice-versa

Imposter requires the following software:

• Python (developed with 2.5 provided with Debian Lenny)
• py-bcrypt (used for password encryption using the Blowfish algorithm)
• Flask
• Werkzeug
• Jinja2
• SQLAlchemy
• SQLAlchemy-migrate (database schema versioning)
• docutils (provides ReST support)
• Markdown
• Flask-WTF (WTForms extension for Flask)
• Flaskjk (my own library with generic Flask functions)

As Imposter uses SQLAlchemy for its database abstraction layer, make sure you have a database supported by SQLAlchemy available.

• Install the software listed under Requirements
• Adjust the configuration in config.py
• Create a database and database accounts for Imposter
• Install the Imposter database: python dbmanage.py install

There are several options for running Imposter. To run with the standard Werkzeug webserver, you can just run python frontend.py for the frontend, and python admin.py for the admin. Because this is often not an option for production environments, you can also run Imposter under Apache using mod_wsgi, or using FastCGI under any other webserver.

For mod_wsgi, Imposter comes with frontend.wsgi and admin.wsgi files.

For FastCGI, Imposter comes with frontend.fcgi and admin.fcgi files.

Check http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/deploying/ for more information concerning deployment.