<rickc> when i used wp a lot i used a remote client most of the time. since i'm usually in habari now, i've discovered the reason was i don't like the wp interface. <rickc> i've even written in my local habari install, then cut and pasted to my wp blog. :)

Japanese Cherry Blossom was the second theme I ported to Habari, a task I undertook for a friend's band, Bitter Sweethearts. Even for a theme that might have a couple of users, making sure that the theme is up to date with the latest Habari features was taking more time than I wanted to spend, given what should be my priorities (my beloved and, yes, finishing my PhD). So, following the recent release of Japanese Cherry Blossom 0.2, the theme has been relicensed under the ASL 2.0, with permission from the author, April D. Spreeman, and I've committed it to the Habari extras repository, where it can be maintained by the Habari community. You can now download the theme from the Habari project website distribution directory, or using subversion (recommended).

Feature requests and bug reports should now be posted on the Habari extras trac.

I've done some updating of the Japanese Cherry Blossom theme for Habari and tested it with the latest Habari release. This is mostly a bug fix and clean up release, and there are still things that need doing.

Details:

• General code clean up.
• Remove cruft left over from Connections template files.
• Fix assignment of previous posts.
• Improved search.
• Add login form

To celebrate the release of Habari 0.5, I've updated the Connections theme for Habari and released version 0.2.

As always, comments are extremely welcome. Offers to take over maintenance also appreciated.

Details

• Change the pagination to the theme function, rather than the deprecated Utils function.
• Add next and previous navigation on individual posts.
• Long overdue cleanup of comments, including 'your comment in moderation notice'.
• Correct the atom feeds in the sidebar.
• Optimise tags call.
• Clean up search and fix a bug that occurs when there are no search matches.
• Use $theme->display() templates instead of include() to be friendlier to plugins.
• Fix calls to theme functions after updates in core
• Tweaks to CSS.
• Reformat all code to meet Habari's code standards.

I'm extremely happy to say that Habari 0.5 has been released. There are way too many changes to list here, but have a look at the release post for an overview. I think this release is a watershed for Habari, and I'm extremely excited.

If you're interested in blogging, please give Habari a spin. We'd love your feedback, and we listen to all sorts of channels.

3,400 projects were nominated. 72 have made it this far. Only 12 will survive.

I've had the 2008 SourceForge Community Choice Awards badge on my site since nominations opened. I thought it was pretty cool when I found out earlier this week that Habari had been chosen as a finalist in the Best New Project category, but I was even more pleased when I got an email from SourceForge saying there had been 3,400 nominations, and we're in the final 12 of our category. I don't know many of the other projects nominated, but I guess that's the point of the Best New Project category.

So head on over to SourceForge and vote for your favourite project. Hopefully that's Habari, but good luck to all the projects!

It seems like an eternity ago that the Habari admin was replaced with Monolith, and all in all, I think it's a good thing. We've had some great additions to the Habari community who have been really kicking it along and ironing out the bugs.

Though I did miss though the incoming links on the dashboard. You might call me vain, but it was nice to be able to see who was linking to my site. Sometimes they were new Habari users who were using one of my plugins or themes, and I could pop over and say hi and thanks. Sometimes they were complaining about one of those same plugins or themes, and I could pop over and say hi and thanks, and hopefully fix the problem.

I've been sick the last few days and needed something braindead easy to do, so I bring you the incoming links module plugin for the new Habari dashboard. No caching or error handling yet, but I might get that finished before you read this post.

As with any plugin that licensing allows me, it's in the Habari extras repository.

I've updated the Publish Quote plugin for Habari, and donated it to the Habari community. It now takes advantage of features added in Habari 0.5 alpha, so that you can set a template for the title as well as the content and specify tags that should be added to your quote entries.

Let me know if you have any feature requests. It would also be great to hear from anyone who's using the plugin.

If all goes according to plan, this should be my first post integrating Disqus comments into my blog. I've written a very simple Habari Disqus plugin that puts Disqus comments on posts that have no existing comments. Where there are previous comments, the native comment system will be used.

At the moment, it's a bit fragile, as your theme needs to use a template called comments.php to display normal comments. I'm hoping that someone else will take an interest and improve upon the basic start.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the spike in developer activity after the merging of the Monolith admin theme into the Habari trunk (though I kind of regret the tremor reference, given the pain in China). Things have continued apace since then, and Owen has written a great post about what's been happening. Again, none of this would be possible, or anywhere near as interesting, without the great community. A small excerpt.

Since the merge of the Monolith code, there have been 99 commits. That's roughly one commit every three hours for the past two weeks. ... As I write this, we're merging the source for our 100th commit in the past two weeks, which will enable Postgres database support. This makes for three database engines that Habari will officially support - a true, multi-engine package. We've also just added s9y imports, which will be a great way for s9y users to try out Habari by importing their data. I'm looking forward to more importers for other popular blogging packages.

• All The Community That Your Blog Doesn't Have - Asymptomatic

I recommend going and reading the whole thing.