What’s new in
Apache Roller 5.0
Dave Johnson
VP Apache Roller at ASF
Web 2.0 Architect at IBM
ApacheCon US 2009 - Oakland, CA
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Agenda
• Roller overview
• Story of Roller up to 5.0
• Development of Roller 5.0
• New features in 5.0
• Roller Project Status
• What’s comes next?
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Roller Overview
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Apache Roller is the open source Java blog
server that drives Sun Microsystem's
blogs.sun.com employee blogging site, the US
Government's blog.usa.gov, the blogs in IBM's
Lotus Connections product, the IBM Developer
Works blogs, the Javalobby's 10,000 user strong
JRoller Java community site and hundreds of
other blogs world-wide. If you want to set up a
blog server for yourself or for several thousand
of your closest friends, try Roller!
http://rollerweblogger.org/project/
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Feature overview
* Wordpress Mu and Wordpress/Lyceum forks provide multi-blog
** LDAP plugin exists but is experimental and unsupported
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Deployment architecture #1
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Deployment architecture #2
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Why choose Roller?
(Given the dominance of Wordpress)
• It’s the best open source blog server
option for the Java platform
• Can be made to work with just about
any relational database
• Can be made to work with just about
any Java application server
• Proven solution for large multi-user sites
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Story of Roller up to 5.0
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

While at HAHT Software
2001
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I learned about open source
2001
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started building something
Very early version of Roller, called Homeport at the time, under development in the HAHTsite IDE. 2001
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worked nights, weekends
and some vacation days too
Alex and Linus Johnson taking an morning walk
at Ocraocoke Island, North Carolina - September 2001
2001
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made it free
2002
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folks started to use it
“I am allowing others to use my
installation of Roller for their
weblogging. Hopefully this will
provide a means for
enhancing the Roller user
base as well as provide a nice
environment for
communication and
expression.”
Anthony Eden
August 8, 2002
2002
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folks started to help
• Lance Lavandowska
• Matt Raible
• Mindaguas Idzelis
• Jaap Van Der Molen
• Anil Gangolli
• Henri Yandell
• and more...
2002-2004
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Sun joined the fun
2004
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I joined Sun
2004
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Roller joined Apache
Proposal for Roller@Apache
Dave Johnson - Feb 28, 2005
We the committers and friends of the open source Roller Weblogger
project propose that the project become part of the Apache Software Foundation. The
rest of this document explains the rationale behind this proposal, how Roller meets the
Apache project scope, initial source, resources required, and initial committer criteria.
0 Rationale
Roller is an open source blog server written in Java and originally developed in 2002 for
an O'Reilly article titled Building an Open Source J2EE Weblogger. Now Roller is used
on multi-user blog servers at the Javalobby's JRoller.com (> 7000 blogs), Sun's
blogs.sun.com (>1000 blogs), and numerous other sites. Roller is an open source
product, available under an Apache-based license, with 5 committers. Recently Sun hired
the original author of Roller to develop Roller and other blog technologies. Sun and the
Roller developers want to ensure
Roller's continued success as a viable, growing, open source product. We think that
perhaps the best way to do this is to become an Apache project.
2005
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Good times...
John Hoffman, Dave Johnson, Simon Phipps, Will Snow and Tim Bray in the back accept a Sun Microsystems 2005 Chairman’s
Award for blogs.sun.com and Humanizing the Corporation. Award winners Danese Cooper and Pat Chanezon not present.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Sun contributed a lot
 Moved Roller to ASF  AtomPub support
 Roller 1, 2, 3 and 4  New template system
 Group blogging  New macro system
 Planet aggregator  UI overhaul
 Pluggable rendering  Theme packaging
 Pluggable caching  Easy install support
 JPA back-end  Memcached caching
 Struts 2 migration  And much more...
 Configuration system
2004-2008
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IBM started using Roller
• DeveloperWork:
external blogs
• BlogCentral:
internal blogs
• And in 2007,
launched Lotus
Connections
including Roller Early screenshot of Lotus Connections (code named “Ventura”) from Elias Torres personal blog
2005-2007
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IBM’s suite thrived
Lotus Connections 2.5 2009
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Sun’s suite never shipped
2006-2007
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Roller Timeline
Lotus Connections
Join Graduate blogs.sun.com
Sun
ASF ASF
0.9.0 0.9.3 0.9.6 0.9.7 0.9.8 1.0 1.1 1.3 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 rc
Apr July Oct Apr Sep Jan April Oct Dec Nov Dec Oct
2002 2002 2002 2003 2003 2005 2005 2005 2005 2006 2007 2009
2.1 2.3 3.1 3.1.1 rc 4.0.1
Mar Nov Apr Nov Jan
2006 2006 2007 2006 2009
Bug fixes
Blogger API Performance Podcasts New URL system Bug fixes
OSCache Indexes, etc. Entry Atts New Template model
Group Blogs Multi-language blogs Media Blogging
Admin UI Spam Mgmt Superuser OpenID, OAuth
Multi-user Entry plugins Web UI redesign Tagging Multi-domain
Referrers Castor -> Hibernate New theme system
Full preview
Comment Mgmt
Pluggable Cache Theme stylesheets
Comments
Trackbacks Hibernate -> OpenJPA
MetaWeblogAPI Entry summaries Migrated to Struts 2
Day and month views AtomPub
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Development of 5.0
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Sun’s suite requirements
• Roller as one component of a suite
• Common user management
• So we made user management pluggable
• Single sign on support via Container
• So we made Spring Security optional
• Federated search
• So we added OpenSearch support
• AtomPub everywhere
• Integrated ROME Propono
2006-2007
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SocialSite requirements
• Roller as demo vehicle for SocialSite
• OAuth for AtomPub
• Access to user information in macros
2007-2008
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OpenID requirements
• A Google Summer of Code project
• By Tatyana Tokareva
• Implement OpenID
• With or without Spring Security
2008
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Media Blogging Requirements
• A San Jose State Univ. student project
• By Ganesh Mathrubootham and Tanuja Varkanthe
• Media gallery
• Media file metadata
• Media file chooser
• Media file feeds
• Easy blogging of media files
• Include as image
• Include as podcast
2008-2009
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Other requirements
• Multi-domain support
• Update all dependencies
• Fix bugs
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New features in 5.0
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OpenID support
• Support for OpenID logins via Spring Security
• new startup property authentication.openid
• Allowed values: disabled, hybrid and only.
http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+OpenID+Support
https://issues.apache.org/roller/browse/ROL-1733
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Media Blogging
• Media file gallery browser with thumbnails
• Media file metadata and feeds
• Easy to add an image to a blog entry
• Easy to upload then blog images
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Simple multi-domain
• One Roller instance serves multiple domains
• e.g. my site at rollerweblogger.org serves four domains via the
configuration below
# roller-custom.properties
weblog.absoluteurl.photophys=http://photophys.com
weblog.absoluteurl.alex=http://greenimp.me
weblog.absoluteurl.linus=http://linusjohnson.com
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ROL-1670
http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/Proposal+Simple+Multidomain+Support
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

OAuth for AtomPub
• AtomPub authentication options now:
• OAuth
• WSSE
• Basic
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import com.sun.syndication.propono.atom.client.* Blog post
example
import com.sun.syndication.feed.atom.*
def authStrategy = new OAuthStrategy(
"roller", // username using Groovy
"55132608a2fb68816bcd3d1caeafc933", // consumer key
"bb420783-fdea-4270-ab83-36445c18c307", // consumer secret and ROME
"HMAC-SHA1", // key type
"http://blogs.example.com/roller-services/oauth/requestToken", Propono
"http://blogs.example.com/roller-services/oauth/authorize",
"http://blogs.example.com/roller-services/oauth/accessToken")
// get the AtomPub service
def appService = AtomClientFactory.getAtomService(
"http://blogs.example.com/roller-services/app", authStrategy)
// find workspace of my blog
def blog = appService.findWorkspace("Blogging Roller")
// find collecton that will accept entries
def entries = blog.findCollection(null, "application/atom+xml;type=entry")
// create and post an entry
def entry = entries.createEntry()
entry.title = "TestPost"
def content = new Content()
content.setValue("This is a test post. w00t!")
entry.setContent([content])
entries.addEntry(entry)
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Updated dependencies
struts2-core-2.1.8.jar openjpa-1.2.1.jar
struts2-spring-plugin-2.1.8.jar geronimo-jpa_3.0_spec-1.0.jar
struts2-tiles-plugin-2.1.8.jar geronimo-jta_1.1_spec-1.1.jar
taglibs-string-1.1.0.jar serp-1.13.1.jar
tiles-api-2.0.6.jar
tiles-core-2.0.6.jar
tiles-jsp-2.0.6.jar rome-1.0.jar
freemarker-2.3.15.jar rome-fetcher-1.0.jar
ognl-2.7.3.jar rome-propono-1.0.jar
oro-2.0.8.jar jdom-1.1.1.jar
antlr-2.7.2.jar
xwork-core-2.1.6.jar
commons-beanutils-1.7.0.jar xmlrpc-common-3.1.2.jar
commons-chain-1.2.jar xmlrpc-client-3.1.2.jar
commons-validator-1.3.1.jar xmlrpc-server-3.1.2.jar
commons-io-1.3.2.jar ws-commons-util-1.0.2.jar
commons-codec-1.4.jar
commons-fileupload-1.2.1.jar
jstl.jar (1.2.2)
spring-2.5.6.jar standard.jar
saxpath-1.0.jar
spring-web-2.5.6.jar serializer.jar
spring-ldap-1.3.0.RELEASE-all.jar xalan.jar
spring-security-acl-2.0.5.RELEASE.jar
spring-security-core-2.0.5.RELEASE.jar guice-2.0.jar
spring-security-taglibs-2.0.5.RELEASE.jar velocity-1.6.2.jar
spring-security-openid-2.0.5.RELEASE.jar
openid4java-0.9.5.jar
lucene-core-2.9.0.jar
apache-xml-security.jar log4j-1.2.12.jar
ehcache-1.6.2.jar commons-lang-2.4.jar
openxri-client-1.2.0.jar commons-logging-1.1.1.jar
openxri-syntax-1.2.0.jar commons-collections-3.2.1.jar
commons-digester-2.0.jar
oauth-core-20090121.jar commons-httpclient-3.1.jar
nekohtml-1.9.7.jar
httpclient-4.0-beta1.jar
Xinha 0.95 (JavaScript)
httpcore-4.0-beta2.jar Yahoo UI Library 2.8.0
jQuery 1.3.1
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Roller Project Status
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Project overview
• Project status
• Great new 5.0 release ready to go
• 7 committers, 3 recently active (none full-time)
• Last release: Roller 4.0.1, January 2009
• 4 active mailing lists, averaging 4 mails/day
• Issues
• Few active committers, small user community
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Web & download statistics
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Mailing list activity
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What comes next?
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Apache Roller 5.0
• Still have work to do
• Testing, debugging, fixing, voting and etc.
• We need your help!
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After that?
• Speaking for myself; might be fun to...
• Build a new front-end?
• GWT, Dojo, OpenSocial Gadgets?
• Make Roller pluggable?
• New plugin architecture, OSGi, Maven?
• Help new contributors?
• Or maybe it’s time to move on.
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Avoiding the attic
• If we want to
• keep Roller going
• be able to grow community
• be able to make releases
• Then
• we need a couple more PMC members
• we need you to participate
• we need you to contribute
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How to help...
“The way to join the project is to subscribe to the
development mailing list and start acting like a
member ask questions, make suggestions, respond to
questions, propose changes and submitting fixes and
patches.
If you get along well with others, do quality work
and show some commitment to the project
somebody will most likely nominate you to be a
committer.”
From http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/ROLLER/How+to+contribute+to+Roller
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Conclusion
• We’ve got another great release ready
• But we’ve entered a new phase for Roller
• We’re community driven
• That means you
Tuesday, November 24, 2009