Update: I've fixed this to work with Blite 0.1-beta3, and also added a form after uploading an image to quickly upload another image.

I mentioned I was going to write an image uploader in my first post, though wasn't actually sure I was going to do it. But tonight was one of those nights where I just felt productive, so after a few hours of work, here it is. In true inception (or imageception, eh?) style, I've uploaded some images of me using my uploader, with my uploader:

Apart from the default theme of course :)

I've been tinkering with this since I first started to properly use Blite and now I would say that it's rather complete. I've cleaned up a few mistakes here and there, brought everything in line and most importantly, added a text editor. Because of that, installing this theme requires more than dropping its folder into your themes directory. It's still simple though, and you don't need to modify any core Blite files.

Download BlackBlueBlite!

I included a small readme in the .zip. Just copy the theme folder into your themes directory, and then place nicEdit_blackblueblite.js and nicEditorIcons.gif into the root directory of your blite install. Keeping in line with Blite's lightness, I've used the small and efficient NicEdit, a single file Javascript library that lets you turn any text area into a WYSIWYG editor. It's what I'm using to write this post, so here's the obligatory screenshot:

I had to make a few edits to the JS library to make it play nice with this theme, since the lib has hard-coded colours. To other users out there playing with blite, it should be fairly obvious how I've added the editor; it can all be done from within sub_post.tpl.

I should also add, that in the course of writing this post I've just remembered some fixes I forgot to do, chief being the admin login page. A new version coming soon :P

As I mentioned in my first post, this blog is powered by a new blogging script named Blite. The project is a result of Doug Robbins' work, and it would appear that I'm the first user, at least in a production sense.

Over the past two days I've been tinkering with the software, and now I'd say I'm pretty familiar with it. So for those of you who are perhaps looking to start a blog and are wondering if Blite is for you, I thought I'd share my views.

Internals

Blite runs purely in PHP, using SQLite as its storage engine. SQLite is a database engine built right into PHP, and the due to how SQLite functions this means that in reality the "database" is simply one file located on your web hosting space, modified directly by PHP itself. As such, you don't need to be running a database server such as MySQL or PostgreSQL.

This makes it incredibly simple to setup and very light on resources, which were indeed Doug's goals in writing the software. Take a peek at the bottom of this page to see hints of its speed and memory consumption. Now while Roph.eu is running on a relatively powerful dedicated server, Blite will still fly on your run of the mill shared hosting account. It remains to be seen how it will hold up in high traffic situations, though due to its simplicity this should not be an issue. I'm a PHP/MySQL kinda guy and have not dabbled with SQLite, but from the PHP side of things, there aren't any things that stand out to me or that I would change out of resource concerns.

Administration

One thing you can't see as an outside user is how you would administrate your Blite install. So here is what the main admin area looks like:



Yup, that's it. There are a few little extra areas with one or two options via the links at the bottom, but what you see above is pretty much all there is. This isn't a negative mind you, one thing that turns me away from Wordpress is that I find it to be prohibitively bloated.

To change your password, you literally enter the hashed variant of it. Indeed, this is something you must do as part of the initial setup process. There is no theme "installation" per se, you simply place the theme in the "themes" directory of your Blite install, and it's ready to use.

Features

The next aspect I'd like to touch on is posting. Here's my view as I write this post:



Obviously what you'll notice here is you literally write your post, exactly as it will be output. Raw HTML. This is fine for me or blite's other current users who are mostly geeks, and it means it's easy to do whatever we'd like in a post easily, such as embedding media and so on. However, a great many potential users will shy away for this reason. Though having said that, I feel I wouldn't even need to ask Doug about whether he plans to include a more advanced editor in future releases, it's surely on the to-do list.

Another feature I'd like to see is the option of uploads. Few blogs or blog posts are without included media, and though I could head off to a nice image host like imgur, I'd prefer to host my images myself. Uploading images manually and creating thumbnails myself would be dull, so to that end I'm currently working on a little image upload script that will generate various sensible thumbnails for this blog.

Conclusion

You should take into account that it's still very early days for Blite. The current version number is 0.2 with the obligatory beta tag. Some parts are unfinished, others confirmed due to be scrapped or changed. This could also mean that my review quickly becomes outdated, though I'll try to add notes as and when updates occur.

Overall I think Doug has a nice start on his hands here, and with continued development, Blite could become very popular. I'm sure I'm not alone in my distaste for Wordpress or simply lack of need for all of the bells and whistles that come as part of a package like WP.

Unless you are a technical user prepared to deal with HTML posting and preparing media externally, I would say at this stage that Blite is not for you. Though watch this space, I think there is great potential. :)

I tried writing one a couple of years ago, though things kind of died. I'm also not too fond of wordpress. The following quote from bash.org puts it quite nicely:

wordpress is an unauthenticated remote shell that, as a useful side feature, also contains a blog
This new blog is powered by Blite, a great little project by Doug Robbins. I first noticed his work as a fellow customer of ServInt, where he wrote some server information scripts. Then he showed up on Lowendbox.com, a great site for finding low cost small VPS servers.

On this new blog I plan to document my adventures writing and administering a number of sites, and the technology behind them. Let's see how it goes. :)

First thing to do is make a new theme for this blog. Perhaps I'll be the first Blite theme author; better get to work!