### Lobsters Rails Project [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/lobsters/lobsters.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/lobsters/lobsters)

This is the
[quite sad](https://www.reddit.com/r/rails/comments/6jz7tq/source_code_lobsters_a_hacker_news_clone_built/)
source code to the site operating at
[https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs).
It is a Rails 5 codebase and uses a SQL (MariaDB in production) backend for the database.

You are free to use this code to start your own [sister site](https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/wiki)
because the code is available under a [permissive license](https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/blob/master/LICENSE) (3-clause BSD).
We welcome bug reports and code contributions that help use improve [lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs).
As a volunteer project we're reluctant to take on work that's not useful to our site, so please understand if we don't want to adopt your custom feature.

2019-05-29 experiment:
Are you interested in running your own sister site and not technical, or otherwise willing to pay for hosting/support?
Maybe you're a Reddit community unhappy with their redesign, want an internal site for your company, or want to experiement with community design?
Please contact Peter (email that name @push.cx).
I'm exploring the idea of a hosting company to run sites using the codebase, or maybe consulting on custom features, and would love to hear from you.
(The only change to Lobsters would be that someone's getting paid to PR back bug fixes.)


#### Contributing bugfixes and new features

We'd love to have your help.
Please see the [CONTRIBUTING](https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) file for details.

#### Initial setup

Use the steps below for a local install or
[lobsters-ansible](https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters-ansible) for our production deployment config.
There's an external project [docker-lobsters](https://github.com/jamesbrink/docker-lobsters) if you want to use Docker.

* Install Ruby 2.3.

* Checkout the lobsters git tree from Github
    ```sh
    $ git clone git://github.com/lobsters/lobsters.git
    $ cd lobsters
    lobsters$
    ```

* Install Nodejs, needed (or other execjs) for uglifier
    ```sh
    Fedora: sudo yum install nodejs
    Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install nodejs
    OSX: brew install nodejs
    ```

* Run Bundler to install/bundle gems needed by the project:

    ```sh
    lobsters$ bundle
    ```
    
    * If when installing the `mysql2` gem on macOS, you see 
      `ld: library not found for -l-lpthread` in the output, see 
      [this solution](https://stackoverflow.com/a/44790834/204052) for a fix.
      You might also see `ld: library not found for -lssl` if you're using
      macOS 10.4+ and Homebrew `openssl`, in which case see
      [this solution](https://stackoverflow.com/a/39628463/1042144).

* Create a MySQL (other DBs supported by ActiveRecord may work, only MySQL and
MariaDB have been tested) database, username, and password and put them in a
`config/database.yml` file.  You will also want a separate database for
running tests:

    ```yaml
    development:
      adapter: mysql2
      encoding: utf8mb4
      reconnect: false
      database: lobsters_dev
      socket: /tmp/mysql.sock
      username: *dev_username*
      password: *dev_password*
      
    test:
      adapter: mysql2
      encoding: utf8mb4
      reconnect: false
      database: lobsters_test
      socket: /tmp/mysql.sock
      username: *test_username*
      password: *test_password*
    ```

* Load the schema into the new database:

    ```sh
    lobsters$ rails db:schema:load
    ```
    
* Define your site's name and default domain, which are used in various places,
in a `config/initializers/production.rb` or similar file:

    ```ruby
    class << Rails.application
      def domain
        "example.com"
      end

      def name
        "Example News"
      end
    end

    Rails.application.routes.default_url_options[:host] = Rails.application.domain
    ```

* Put your site's custom CSS in `app/assets/stylesheets/local`.

* Seed the database to create an initial administrator user, the `inactive-user`, and at least one tag:

    ```sh
    lobsters$ rails db:seed
    ```

* On your personal computer, you can add some sample data and run the Rails server in development mode.
  You should be able to login to `http://localhost:3000` with your new `test` user:

    ```sh
    lobsters$ rails fake_data
    lobsters$ rails server
    ```

* Deploying the site in production requires setting up a web server and running the app in production mode.
  There are more tools and options available than we can describe; find a guide or an expert.
  The lobsters-ansible repo has our config files to crib from. Some app-specific notes:

* Set up crontab or another scheduler to run regular jobs:

    ```
    */5 * * * *  cd /path/to/lobsters && env RAILS_ENV=production sh -c 'bundle exec ruby script/mail_new_activity; bundle exec ruby script/post_to_twitter; bundle exec ruby script/traffic_range'
    ```

* See `config/initializers/production.rb.sample` for GitHub/Twitter integration help.

#### Administration

Basic moderation happens on-site, but most other administrative tasks require use of the rails console in production.
Administrators can create and edit tags at `/tags`.