Getting Started with Chyrp

Introduction

In the world of web development, when building a blog, you don’t always want to refer to a slow, over-featured blogging engine like Wordpress. Thankfully, there is a solution, and its name is Chyrp. Chyrp is a blogging engine that is designed to be extremely lightweight, while still retaining functionality. Alex Suraci, the developer behind Chyrp, codes it in Twig, a language specifically created for this project. The Twig is then put through a compiler and its output is solid PHP.

Before we start, it is important to know how Chyrp is extended: Feathers extend post formats, Modules add functionality, such as a commenting system, and Themes change the look and feel. Keep this in mind.

Interested? Well then, let’s get started!

Installation

Download Chyrp, and open up the folder Chyrp v2.0, which should be in the same directory as the archive. Select all the contents and copy and paste it to a directory on your web server (for the purposes of this article, we’ll be using the /chyrp/ directory). Now would be the time to read the COPYING file, so you don’t break any copyright laws. You can delete it or keep it, along with the README.markdown file. If your server isn’t already started, start it. Go to http://localhost/chyrp/ (Or whatever address you use to access your testing server) in your web browser and you should have two errors at the top of the browser window: one for the .htaccess file, and the other for permissions.

Go ahead and create the .htaccess file with the contents it shows, and save it in the /chyrp/ directory. You also need to CHMOD the /chyrp/includes/ directory to 777. This means changing the permissions to all read and write. Once you’ve done that, refresh the web browser page. Now, go ahead and fill in your database information. In this article, we’ll be using MySQL.

Back at the installation screen, insert your database information. The host is usually localhost. As for a table prefix, we can leave that blank, unless we’re installing multiple instances of Chyrp on the same database.

Once you filled out the form, hit Install. It fills the database with the information and configures the files within the instance. When it is complete, this page will show:

So, delete install.php within /chyrp/, as it poses a security risk if you keep it. If you speak German, you’re in lucky, because that is the only language pack available at the moment. So now, click Take me to my site! and you’ll be taken to the home page.

As you can see, there are no posts. Go to the sidebar and click Login, and use your credentials from before. Once that is done, a toolbar will appear in the top. Click the Admin link and you’ll be taken to the backend.

Writing in Chyrp

When you open the backend (it is located at /chyrp/admin/), the Write section is automatically visible. And because Chyrp is a blogging engine, you can make posts and pages. Posts can come in many different forms, such as photos, videos, and plain old text. These different forms come in extensions called Feathers. If you add a photo, you’ll need the photo Feather in order to do that. The text Feather already comes with Chyrp, and is already activated. The photo, video, link, audio, quote, and chat Feathers already come with the installation, but are not yet activated. We’ll go through activating them later.

To create a post or page, just select the type on the tabs and type up what you’d like to say. If you click More Options you can choose a permission status, slug, trackback, timestamp, and pinned status (whether or not you’d like it as first post, no matter what). Once you’re done, you can save it, or Publish it. Once you hit Publish, Chyrp will take you to the home page, where you can view your post. It’s just that easy!

Manage your Install

Head back to the backend and click on the Manage tab, near the top. This will bring you to this page:

From here you can manage everything about your install. If you click one of the tabs near the middle of the page, you can select what you want to manage. As you add Modules, more tabs will appear.

Modules are ways to extend your install. For example, one Module creates a commenting system, and another allows you to cache pages. We’ll get into this later.

What you need to focus on in the Manage section is the Groups tab. This allows you to change permissions for groups. Currently, you are part of the Admin group. Click on the edit link (it’s on the right side) and you’ll be taken to the page for editing group permissions, as well as the name of the group. Click Save when you’re done.

Change the Settings

The next navigation option is Settings. Under General, you can change your blogs’ name, description, and other settings. Under Content, you can edit posts per page, uploads path, and allowing XML-RPC support. Then, in Users, you can allow r disallow users registering themselves, the default user group, and what group Guests are in (you can even allow all un-registered guests to have Admin permissions, though it is not suggested). Finally, under Routes, you can allow clean URL’s, which will make the URL’s formatted as stated in the form below (I highly recommend it—who wants a URL with a question mark in it?).

Extending your Install

The Extend section is very important. Extensions are what make Chyrp so very powerful and functional. Modules are very powerful, and the ones that are made by the head developer come with Chyrp. Those are:

• Textilize
• SWFUpload
• Paging
• Aggregator
• Tagginator
• Read More
• Comment System
• Markdown
• SmartyPants
• Cacher

All these do exactly what they’re named for. To activate them, just drag it from the red zone into the green zone. When you do that, a dialog pops up, reminding you to change the permissions. Once you’ve added all the Modules you want, go back into Manage > Groups and change the permissions so you can manage the Modules.

Now, go ahead and go into the Feathers section. As you can see, the following Feathers come with Chyrp:

• Photo
• Video
• Link
• Audio
• Quote
• Chat

Plus, the Text Feather, but it is already activated. To activate them, it is the same action as before. If you enable the Photo, Video, or Audio Feather, then you need to create a uploads directory in /chyrp/ and CHMOD it to 777 so you can upload media.

And finally, Themes. The theme that comes with Chyrp is called Stardust. It may be fine for a casual blogger, but for a designer, like me, you need to design your own. That will be in a follow-up article.

Downloading Extensions

There are some more extensions on the Chyrp site. There are not many, but the user base is growing rapidly, and so is the development base. To add Feathers, Modules, Themes, etc, just download it and extract the archive to /themes/, /modules/, or /feathers/, respectively. Then, just go into the backend and activate it. It’s just that simple.

Chyrp vs. Wordpress

You may be questioning, “Why Chyrp? Why not just go with the popular solution: Wordpress?” Well, why Wordpress? There are a lot of functions in Wordpress that you’ll never need or use, so why have them. A fresh Chyrp install is bare bones, and you’re free to install what you need. Plus, Chyrp is a lot faster than Wordpress, on the front and backend.

As well as speed, Chyrp has better code than Wordpress—Alex (founder and sole core-developer) uses Ruby on Rails and Python helpers to have perfect code that is easy to edit.

While retaining functionality, Chyrp is more flexible than Wordpress. It can do a lot of different functions, and is easy to mod to your hearts content.

So why use Wordpress?

The Chyrp Community and Support

Chyrp has a strong community and support group. In the Discuss section of the Chyrp site, you can ask for help or just discuss… whatever. Or, to get instant help, log on to good ol’ IRC on irc://freenode.org/chyrp (that would be irc.freenode.org as the server, then #chyrp as the channel).

In the next article, we’ll be building a custom theme!