Today's Topic: LESS

Un­le­ss you are ha­ppy wi­th your si­te looking like strai­ght boots­trap (and you rea­lly should no­t) CSS goes a long way to­war­ds making your pa­ges look just the way you want them to.

The bad part is tha­t, if you ha­ve do­ne any CSS you wi­ll know CSS is a rea­ll­y, rea­lly cra­ppy "lan­gua­ge". Tha­t's why a who­le phi­lum of tools has been created that take a mo­re po­wer­ful syn­tax and ou­tput CSS.

Niko­la now has su­pport for one of the­s­e, ca­lled LE­SS (al­thou­gh adding su­pport for others like SASS should be ve­ry ea­s­y).

So, how does it wo­rk?

1. In your the­me, put LE­SS fi­les in the le­ss/ fol­de­r.

2. Crea­te le­ss/­tar­ge­ts and put the­re the fi­les that should be com­pi­led using le­ssc, one per li­ne.

3. The­­re is no step 3

Nikola will automatically build output/assets/css/foo.css out of theme/foo/less/foo.less and will even support the usual theme inheritance, so if there ever is a LESS-based theme out there, you can just tweaks the files you want.

I per­so­na­lly am not wri­ting that hy­po­the­ti­cal LE­SS-­ba­sed the­me, but I am mo­re than ready to help whoe­ver wan­ts to do one.

Today's Topic: Auto Mode

Niko­la has ha­d, sin­ce day one, a way to run in "au­to mo­de". That means that it would re­build the si­te au­to­ma­ti­ca­lly when it saw a fi­le chan­ge. That was pro­vi­ded by doit the cool so­ftwa­re that hand­les niko­la's ta­sk tree.

The pro­blem was that it was sli­gh­tly li­mite­d, and it did­n't no­ti­ce con­fi­gu­ra­tion chan­ges, or when you added new fi­le­s. It on­ly reac­ted to chan­ges in things it al­ready knew as de­pen­den­cie­s.

We­ll, in v6, Niko­la has a new au­to mo­de cour­tesy of Py­thon Li­ve­re­load that fixes all tha­t.

I thi­nk the best way to show it is wi­th a vi­deo, so he­re it is (the­re are ty­pos and su­ch, just see the big pic­tu­re ;-):

Today's Topic: Comments

Niko­la has su­pported 3rd par­ty co­m­ment ser­vi­ces sin­ce day one. Be­cau­se it started as "so­me­thing that ge­ne­ra­tes my si­te", it su­pported the co­m­ment sys­tem I was using (and sti­ll am usin­g), Dis­qus.

The­re is no­thing wrong wi­th Dis­qus, and it wi­ll be the de­fault in v6, but if you want so­me­thing el­se... we got you co­ve­re­d.

So Niko­la v6 su­ppor­ts:

• In­­ten­s­e­­De­­ba­­te (sam­­ple si­­te)

• Li­­ve­­Fy­­re (sam­­ple si­­te)

• Moot.it (sam­­ple si­­te)

• Dis­­qus (just see be­­­low ;-)

All wi­th just mi­nor chan­ges in your con­fi­g. Be­cau­se of how it's do­ne, all the­mes wi­ll su­pport all co­m­ment sys­te­ms wi­th at most ve­ry mi­nor tweaks.

If you know of any other co­m­ment sys­te­ms wor­th su­ppor­tin­g, just open an is­sue and I'­ll get them in.

UPDATE

Thanks to Kw­pol­ska and pun­cha­gan now Google+ and Fa­ce­book are al­so su­pported for co­m­men­ts.