OrangeShark / PLUG-Wall

Panther Linux User Group's Summer Open Source Project.

PLUG-Wall

Panther Linux User Group's Summer Open Source Project.

PLUG-Wall is an embeddable JavaScript based message board that can be included on any of your websites. There is two components, a server side which will store and recieve posts from the user and a client side script which will generate the HTML for the message board and allow users to send and get posts from the server.

Contributing

To contribute to this project, press the fork button above on Github. This will be your own personal git repo to work on. Then you will clone your project

# Clone your own git repo, found on the top of your repo
git clone [e-mail]:<username>/PLUG-Wall.git

Add the original project repo as a remote upstream, this will allow you to update your copy.

# Move into the file
cd PLUG-Wall
# Add a new remote which points to this project
git remote add upstream [e-mail]:PantherLinuxUserGroup/PLUG-Wall.git

To get the latest updates from the main project repo

# checkout your master branch
git checkout master
# pull from upstream remote into your master branch
git pull upstream master

To work on a new feature, create a branch on your repo

# checkout a new branch
git checkout -b <name-of-branch>

The branch you have just created is where you will work on. Working on a branch allows you to keep your master as a mirror of the main project's master.

To locally merge your branch with the main project's upstream use

# while in current branch
git pull upstream master

Then push your branch to your fork.

git push origin <name-of-branch>

You can now send a Pull Request from Github selecting your branch and to merge with the master. The Pull Request will be reviewed and be merged if accepted.

Running the server

To run the server you will need to install node.js. Visit node.js's website or with your package manager. Be sure to get the latest version and have it installed as node.

You will also need to install the server dependencies

npm install

Once you installed node.js and you cloned the project to your computer as described in the section about contributing, you can run the server.

# At the root of the project
# Running the server
npm start

Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://0.0.0.0:1337/

Storage options

PLUG-Wall currently supports three storage options: memory, file, and redis. Storage preferences are saved on a per board basis. To change the prefered storage preference for a board, change the storage property of that board in config.json.

Memory Memory storage is volatiles. Posts will only be available throught the lifetime of the PLUG-Wall instance. To use this type of storage change the storage property of the board to memory in config.json

File File storage is persistent. Posts will be saved to and retrieved from a file, thus, making the posts available even if the server fails or is restarted. To use this type of storage change the storage property of the board to file in config.json

Redis Redis storage is persistent. It uses the redis key-value store to save the post data. Currently, only local redis instances are supported. To use this type of storage change the storage property of the board to redis in config.json. You will also need to install an instances of the redis server in the machine where Plug-WALL is running.

# Installing redis in Ubuntu
apt-get install redis-server