Running Weblogs with Slash by Chromatic, David Krieger, Brian Aker

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Slashdot is the "Ur-Weblog": the discussion site that has launched a fleet of blogs, from low-profile personal pages to fast-growing communities like Metafilter. You can build your own site with the same open source software that runs Slashdot -- and get the exceptional reliability, flexibility, and scalability that Slashdot has sweated to deliver. The software is called Slash, and this is your complete, practical, step-by-step guide to implementing it.

Running Weblogs with Slash covers the entire process of deploying sites with Slash: standard and advanced installations; managing the Slash publishing cycle; customizing Slash's look-and-feel (not every site wants to look exactly like Slashdot); and much more. There are full chapters on editing and updating stories; and on reviewing and approving submissions. There's also systematic coverage of site administration, including advanced automation with the Slash daemon.

The technical stuff isn't all you'll find here. For example, you'll not only learn how to use Slashdot's impressive moderation and topic control tools, there's a full chapter on encouraging a community with the openness and participation you're looking for.

This book's coauthors include chromatic, a Slash developer and writer whose name will be familiar to any regular Slashdot denizens. Maybe you've read his thoughtful, useful book reviews. If you're even mildly interested in building a blog or other community site -- or in using Slash to deliver any kind of web content -- you ought to read his thoughtful, supremely useful book. (Bill Camarda)

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer with nearly 20 years' experience in helping technology companies deploy and market advanced software, computing, and networking products and services. He served for nearly ten years as vice president of a New Jersey–based marketing company, where he supervised a wide range of graphics and web design projects. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks For Dummies®, Second Edition.

From the Publisher

Slash is the open source software system that drives the hugely popular Slashdot web site and many others. Slash implements the kind of web site that has come to be called a "weblog": a moderated list, in reverse chronological order, of timely items with links to further discussion on-site, or to further information off-site. Essentially, a weblog is a cooperatively authored daily newspaper for some defined community on the net.

Slash has spawned several imitators. The existence of so many different systems for operating a weblog site demonstrates that there are many people and groups on the net who want to run their own online community newspapers. Slash is based on open source technologies (Perl, Apache, and MySQL), and it makes use of open protocols (XML and RDF) for exchanging headlines with other sites.

Anyone who wants to get a weblog site up and running will want to read this book, particularly system administrators who may not have the time or the background to learn all about Slash by reading the source code. Content managers of Slash sites who want to be able to use the system more effectively will also benefit from this book, which organizes the knowledge currently distributed throughout the Slash source code, Slashcode web site, and mailing lists, and provides it in an organized package.

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents