Mango Blog is Back After 10+ Years!

Tools and Libraries
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You won’t believe this: after more than a decade, Mango Blog finally has a new version!

For those who remember, Mango Blog was powering so many of our personal blogs back in the early 2010s. It was flexible, and fun to extend. Then… time passed, life happened - a pregnancy, family health issues…-, and Mango Blog just sat quietly for years, although I kept using it for my personal websites.

What’s New

  • Brand new admin
  • Better theme support: more flexibility and smoother customization. Design “blocks” built in the themes.
  • Core fixes and improvements to keep it running happily on Lucee
  • And a lot more! (Localization, login improvements, new plugins, install sample info to match themes, etc)

I haven’t tested all of the install options. They used to work, but there could have been some changes in Lucee or CF admin that broke them. Having an already made datasource works fine (I only tested MySQL and I’ll probably remove support for MSSQL unleess somebody wants to test it out).

I’ve only tested on Lucee!

I’ll be making some videos about the new theming engine. If you want to test it out and let me know if you find any issues in the installer or something else, let me know.

As an example of the new theming options, you can check out https://eprofessor.com It has close to 50 design “blocks” that the content editors can mix and match in any of the website pages.

Download it here: https://github.com/asfusion/mango/releases/download/version_2.0/Mango_2.zip

Thanks to everyone who ever used Mango Blog!
https://www.mangoblog.org

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Very cool, welcome back!

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Thank you!

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I found an issue in the zip file. I’ve corrected it.

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for better discoverability on github, you might wanna consider adding some hashtags to the about section?

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i.e. like we do with the lucee?repo?

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Done!

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This is very interesting… :telescope:

While looking at the mangoblog.org site, the one thing that kept infecting my thoughts was the lack of any UI screenshots.

Just a few of the management or admin pages might help me wrap my brain around the content and scope of the app.

And now you also know my thoughts… :thinking:
AL

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Yes, the website also needs a refresh, since any of the admin or installer screenshots would be completely outdated. I removed all the previous screenshots for that reason. I also need to add a demo with the new, more modern themes.

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Also, note that nearly all 10 of the featured sites that were using mango back then no longer even exist/domains are gone. Same with many random ones among the rest.

We could help in assessing those (perhaps via automation), but in terms of checking specifically for continued mango use, what string could we look for, assuming something was common to mango sites (beyond the word mango)?

BTW, I was about to look into switching to It back just as you all went on hiatus with it. Welcome back, of course!

PS I had looked for a way to reach you privately about the failing sites. Then I’d wondered if an issue on the repo may be best. But with all the discussion here, I figured I’d share the observation now–before someone else faced the prospect. :slight_smile:

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Hi Charlie!
I’ll have to go through all the pages and see what can stay, what should go and what needs to be added.
I know there are also a few small things not working such as the preview for unpublished items that I need to list (and fix!).

For those asking, I made a video for the installer, but that includes some theme demos and admin screens here: Installation | Mango Blog

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Thanks, Laura.

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