Thank you, double feature

This week's Philly PHPMeet-up was all about Drupal. The night was jam-packed with many wonderous things, including some of the latest and greatest drupal modules, philly-based sites powered by drupal, and even the drupal song (DANGER:ITS UBER-CATCHY and has remained firmly embedded in my brain since I first listened to it over-and-over again)

Two of the most interesting non-drupal things I first heard about last Tuesday night were Habari and Snag-it. Habari is an open source blogging platform that is being developed right here in Philadelphia, and Snag-it is a wonderful little program that allows you to quickly and easily take screen-shots and pimp them up all nice-like in one simple step.

I am so jazzed about both of these, that I decided to install Habari and produce a step-by-step tutorial using Snag-it. (The tutorial's target audience is a total n00b with a hosting account with Site5, who wants to get in on the early stages of this home-grown 'next-gen' blogging platform)

Here goes:
First, download the package here. Then extract all the files.


Next, create a new directory on your site, and transfer the files using FTP. If you need a good FTP program, download FileZilla - its super-easy to use and totally free.



Now its time for database stuff. Lucky for me, my Site5 account makes it nice and candy for anyone one who can point-and-click to manage databases. Simply log-in to site admin, and select 'mySQL Databases' --> Manage Databases. Scroll down to the section labeled 'Create mySQL database', and give it a name.



Once you have created the database, go back to 'mySQL databases' --> 'Manage Users'. First, create a user, and assign a password. Then, go to the section labeled 'Grant Permissions' and select the database and user you just created.



Now for the fun part! Your first look at Habari's simple-chic interface. To complete the installation, all you need to do is view the directory that you uploaded your Habari files to in a browser.



Fill in the information about the database name, user, and password that you just created. Give your new Habari Blog a name, and click 'Install'.



Voilà! - you have a shiny new home-grown blog!

So there you go - one night, two awesome new-to-me tools, one colorful tutorial. Now I'm off to get my hands dirty hacking into Habari to see what I can find.

woohoo!