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CAUTION: This master branch is a development branch that can contain bugs. For productive environments you should use the current Ruby gem version, or the latest stable branch (3.0-stable).

About

Alchemy CMS

Alchemy is a powerful, flexible and user centric Rails CMS.

Read more about Alchemy on the website and in the guidelines.

Features

  • Highly flexible templating that completely separates content from markup
  • End-User centric graphical user interface
  • Multi language and multi domain
  • SEO friendly urls
  • User Access Control
  • Build in contact form mailer
  • Attachments and downloads
  • Powerful image rendering
  • Extendable via Rails engines
  • Integrates into existing Rails Apps
  • Flexible caching
  • Hostable on any Server that supports Ruby on Rails, a SQL Database and ImageMagick

Rails Version

This version of Alchemy CMS runs with Rails 4 (including 4.1)

Rails 4.2 support is coming soon. Watch this pull request.

Ruby Version

Alchemy runs with Ruby >= 1.9.3 (including Ruby 2.0 and 2.1).

For a Ruby 1.8.7 compatible version use the 2.3-stable branch.

Installation

Install as a standalone project

Use the installer:

$ gem install alchemy_cms --pre
$ alchemy new my_magicpage

and follow the instructions to finish the installation.

The installer has some options (like choosing the database). See them with:

$ alchemy --help

Install into an existing Rails project

1. Add the Alchemy gem:

Put this into your Gemfile:

gem 'alchemy_cms', github: 'magiclabs/alchemy_cms', branch: 'master'

NOTE: You normally want to use a stable branch, like 3.0-stable.

2. Update your bundle:

$ bundle install

3. Set the authentication user

Now you have to decide, if you want to use your own user model or if you want to use the Devise based user model that Alchemy provides and was extracted into its own gem.

Use Alchemy user

If you don't have your own user class, you can use the Alchemy user model. Just add the following gem into your Gemfile:

gem 'alchemy-devise', '~> 2.0'

Then run:

$ bundle install
$ bin/rake alchemy_devise:install:migrations
Use your User model

In order to use your own user model you need to tell Alchemy about it.

The best practice is to use an initializer:

# config/initializers/alchemy.rb
Alchemy.user_class_name = 'YourUserClass'       # Defaults to 'User'
Alchemy.login_path      = '/your/login/path'    # Defaults to '/login'
Alchemy.logout_path     = '/your/logout/path'   # Defaults to '/logout'

The only thing Alchemy needs to know from your user class is the alchemy_roles method.

This method has to return an Array (or ActiveRecord::Relation) with at least one of the following roles: member, author, editor, admin.

Example:

# app/models/user.rb

def alchemy_roles
  if admin?
    %w(admin)
  end
end

Please follow this guide for further instructions on how to customize your user class even more.

4. Install Alchemy into your app:

After you set the user model you need to run the Alchemy install task:

$ bin/rake alchemy:install

Now everything should be set up and you should be able to visit the Alchemy Dashboard at:

http://localhost:3000/admin

*) Use your custom path if you mounted Alchemy at something else then '/'

Customizing

Alchemy has very flexible ways to organize and manage content. Please be sure to read the introduction guide in order to understand the basic idea of how Alchemy works.

Upgrading

The Alchemy team takes upgrades very seriously and tries to make them as smooth as we can. Therefore we have build in upgrade tasks, that try to automate as much as possible.

That's why after updating the Alchemy gem you should always run the upgrader:

$ bundle update alchemy_cms
$ bin/rake alchemy:upgrade

Alchemy will print out useful information after running the automated tasks that help a smooth upgrade path. So please take your time and read them.

Always be sure to keep an eye on the config/alchemy/config.yml.defaults file and update your config/alchemy/config.yml accordingly.

Also, git diff is your friend. You are using git to track changes of your projects, right?

Deployment

Alchemy ships with Capistrano based deployment receipts which takes care of everything you need to deploy an Alchemy site.

Add Capistrano gem

First you need to add Capistrano to your Gemfile:

# Gemfile
gem 'capistrano', '2.15.5', group: 'development'

A note about Capistrano version:

Alchemy's deploy script is currently only compatible with Capistrano 2.x (See this pull request if you want to help us upgrade to 3.x).

Generate the deploy file

To generate the deploy file you need to use this generator:

$ bin/rails g alchemy:deploy_script

and follow the instructions.

If you have your own Capistrano receipts you can require the Alchemy tasks in your config/deploy.rb file:

# deploy.rb
require 'alchemy/capistrano'

Synchronize your data

Alchemy Capistrano receipts offer much more then only deployment related tasks. We also have tasks to make your local development easier. To get a list of all receipts type:

$ bundle exec cap -T alchemy
Import data from server
$ bundle exec cap alchemy:import:all

This imports your servers data onto your local development machine. This is very handy if you want to clone the current server state.

Export data to server

That even works the other way around:

$ bundle exec cap alchemy:export:all

NOTE: This will overwrite the database on your server. But calm down my dear friend, Alchemy will ask you to perform a backup before overwriting it.

Without Capistrano

If you don't use Capistrano you have to make sure that the uploads, tmp/cache/assets, public/assets and public/pictures folders get shared between deployments, otherwise you will loose data. No, not really, but you know, just keep them in sync.

Please take a look into Alchemys Capistrano receipt in order to see how you could achieve this.

Testing

If you want to contribute to Alchemy (and we encourage you to do so) we have a strong test suite that helps you to not break anything.

To prepare the tests of your Alchemy fork please make sure to run the preparation task:

# ~/your/local/alchemy_cms
$ bin/rake alchemy:spec:prepare

to set up the database for testing.

Run your tests with:
$ bundle exec rspec

Alternatively you can just run:

$ bundle exec rake

*) This default task executes the database preparations and runs all defined test cases.

A note about RSpec version:

Alchemy specs are written in RSpec 3. Please do not use depricated RSpec 2.x syntax. Thanks

Getting Help

PLEASE don't use the Github issues for feature requests. If you want to contribute to Alchemy please read the contribution guidelines before doing so.

Resources

Authors

License

Spread the love

If you like Alchemy, please help us to spread the word about Alchemy and star this repo on GitHub, upvote it on The Ruby Toolbox, mention us on Twitter and vote for it on Bitnami.

That will help us to keep Alchemy awesome.

Thank you <3!