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Vix: Website-management software

Vix is a website-management application (or Content Management System). E-commerce functionality is to be added later this year. Vix is used in production to power websites that can be easily managed by non-technical users. The project is backed by Vixu.com, which is a commercial entity that provides a Software-as-a-Service version of the software with managed hosting infrastructure and professional support. Vixu.com has a strong commitment to open source and makes the source code of the application perpetually available under the free Apache License, version 2.0.

Technology

Vix is written in Clojure, a Lisp implementation that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This means that Vix embraces existing Java infrastructure and (legacy) Java libraries used by enterprise customers, while using a language that allows for rapid development. Vix uses Enlive templating and the Compojure framework. The client-side code is written in ClojureScript using the Google Closure tools. Vix exposes all functionality through a RESTful API, allowing for easy integration with external applications.

Installation

This installation procedure is targeted at developers and describes how to install the source version. In the future we will provide a pre-compiled package as well. If you are a non-technical user Vixu.com is happy to set up a free demo account for you in return for your feedback (use the contact information below to get in touch).

Vix requires a working Java environment with Leiningen and CouchDB installed. The other dependencies are installed through Leiningen. The installation instructions below will also install Git and curl. For production use you also need an application server like Apache Tomcat, but for testing and development you can launch a simple server using the Ring plugin for Leiningen.

This is the sequence of commands used to install Vix on a clean Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installation (if you already installed some of the dependencies you can skip those commands). They are meant to be entered in the order listed. If you're using a different operating system and need help installing the application you can contact the author for support (see below for contact information). Note that the Microsoft Windows operating system is not officially supported, but Windows users might have some success using Cygwin.

Install Java:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdk

OpenJDK is the default Java version for Ubuntu, but it is also possible to install the Oracle Java distribution.

Install Curl:

sudo apt-get install curl

Install CouchDB and create the database:

sudo apt-get install couchdb
sudo /etc/init.d/couchdb start
curl -X PUT http://127.0.0.1:5984/vix

Install Leiningen (you can also use another directory instead of /usr/local/bin, like ~/bin in your home directory, as long as it is added to the executable path):

wget https://raw.github.com/technomancy/leiningen/stable/bin/lein
sudo mv lein /usr/local/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/lein

Install Git:

sudo apt-get install git

Install Vix:

mkdir ~/clj
cd ~/clj
git clone git://github.com/fmw/vix.git
cd vix/
lein deps

If you chose a different database name earlier you should change the src/clj/vix/config.clj script to reflect this.

Compile the client-side ClojureScript code using the lein-cljsbuild plugin:

lein cljsbuild once

Start the REPL:

lein repl

Execute the add-user function in order to add a user with full access privileges:

REPL started; server listening on localhost:35140.
user=> (load "vix/auth")
nil
user=> (in-ns 'vix.auth)
#<Namespace vix.auth>
vix.auth=> (add-user "vix" "my-username" "my-password" {:* [:GET :PUT :DELETE :POST]})
{:_rev "1-971bd05654d83183728c9d9ff08543b5",
:_id "64e54e12dbed10a67e49af009d020776",
:type "user",
:username "my-username",
:password "$2a$12$qrni2.vyScJEGc0ZfRXadeKw9Imp8SWvrHzatoF0cCPh.O8cNGIfMwC",
:permissions {:* [:GET :PUT :DELETE :POST]}}

Only the lines starting with "user=>" and "vix.auth=>" need to be entered (omitting those prefixes), because the other lines are REPL output.

Create a directory to store Apache Lucene indexes (you can change the path by editing the lucene-index-path value in src/clj/vix/config.clj):

sudo mkdir /var/lucene
sudo mkdir /var/lucene/vix
sudo chown yourusername:yourusergroup /var/lucene/vix

Start the server:

cd ~/clj/vix/
lein ring server

Now you can open the admin backend at http://localhost:3000/admin (assuming everything was installed successfully).

In the near future we will provide a .war file that you can easily deploy on your existing Java infrastructure. For now, you can compile it thusly:

lein ring uberwar

Questions and feedback

Please feel free to contact Filip de Waard directly at fmw@vixu.com. Vixu.com offers a hosted version of the software that includes professional support, but we try to answer any questions and feedback from members of the general public as well. We don't charge for community support. Your feedback benefits all users and it is always nice to hear from people that are using the software, so please get in touch!