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 (3.2-stable).
Alchemy is a powerful, flexible and user centric Rails CMS.
Read more about Alchemy on the website and in the guidelines.
- 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
This version of Alchemy CMS runs with Rails 4.2
- For a Rails 4.0/4.1 compatible version use the
3.1-stablebranch. - For a Rails 3.2 compatible version use the
2.8-stablebranch. - For a Rails 3.1 compatible version use the
2.1-stablebranch. - For a Rails 3.0 compatible version use the
2.0-stablebranch. - For a Rails 2.3 compatible version use the
1.6-stablebranch.
Alchemy runs with Ruby >= 2.0.0.
For a Ruby 1.9.3 compatible version use the 3.1-stable branch.
For a Ruby 1.8.7 compatible version use the 2.3-stable branch.
Use the installer:
$ gem install alchemy_cms --pre
$ alchemy new my_magicpageand follow the instructions to finish the installation.
The installer has some options (like choosing the database). See them with:
$ alchemy --helpPut this into your Gemfile:
gem 'alchemy_cms', github: 'AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms', branch: 'master'NOTE: You normally want to use a stable branch, like 3.0-stable.
If you want to use Russian translation and have better i18n support, you should put:
gem 'russian', '~> 0.6.0'or gem with similar functionality into your Gemfile.
$ bundle installNow 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.
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', github: 'AlchemyCMS/alchemy-devise', branch: 'master'NOTE: You normally want to use a stable branch, like 2.0-stable.
Then run:
$ bundle install
$ bin/rake alchemy_devise:install:migrationsIn 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.current_user_method = 'current_admin_user' # Defaults to 'current_user'
Alchemy.signup_path = '/your/signup/path' # Defaults to '/signup'
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.
# app/models/user.rb
def alchemy_roles
if admin?
%w(admin)
end
endPlease follow this guide for further instructions on how to customize your user class even more.
After you set the user model you need to run the Alchemy install task:
$ bin/rake alchemy:installNow everything should be set up and you should be able to visit the Alchemy Dashboard at:
*) Use your custom path if you mounted Alchemy at something else then '/'
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.
Beginning with Alchemy 3.1 we do not patch the ApplicationController anymore. If you have controllers that loads Alchemy content or uses Alchemy helpers in the views (i.e. render_navigation or render_elements) you can either inherit from Alchemy::BaseController or you include Alchemy::ControllerActions in your controller (that's the recommended way).
By default, Alchemy Dashboard is accessible at http://example.com/admin. You can change this by setting Alchemy.admin_path and Alchemy.admin_constraints.
For example, these settings:
# config/initializers/alchemy.rb
Alchemy.admin_path = '/backend'
Alchemy.admin_constraints = {subdomain: 'hidden'}will move the dashboard to http://hidden.example.com/backend.
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:upgradeAlchemy 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?
Alchemy has an official Capistrano extension which takes care of everything you need to deploy an Alchemy site.
Please use https://github.com/AlchemyCMS/capistrano-alchemy, if you want to deploy with 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.
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.
First of all you need to clone your fork to your local development machine. Then you need to install the dependencies with bundler.
$ bundle installTo prepare the tests of your Alchemy fork please make sure to run the preparation task:
$ bundle exec rake alchemy:spec:prepareto set up the database for testing.
$ bundle exec rspecAlternatively you can just run*:
$ bundle exec rake*) This default task executes the database preparations and runs all defined test cases.
You can even start the dummy app and use it to manually test your changes with:
$ cd spec/dummy
$ bin/rake db:setup
$ bin/rails sA note about RSpec version:
Alchemy specs are written in RSpec 3. Please do not use deprecated RSpec 2.x syntax. Thanks
- Read the guidelines: http://guides.alchemy-cms.com.
- Read the documentation: http://rubydoc.info/github/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms
- If you found a bug please use the issue tracker on Github.
- For questions about general usage please use Stack Overflow, the User Group or the IRC channel.
- New features should be discussed on our Trello Board.
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.
- Homepage: http://alchemy-cms.com
- Live-Demo: http://demo.alchemy-cms.com (user: demo, password: demo123)
- API Documentation: http://rubydoc.info/github/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms
- Issue-Tracker: https://github.com/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms/issues
- Sourcecode: https://github.com/AlchemyCMS/alchemy_cms
- User Group: http://groups.google.com/group/alchemy-cms
- IRC Channel: irc://irc.freenode.net#alchemy_cms
- Discussion Board: https://trello.com/alchemycms
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/alchemy_cms
- Thomas von Deyen: https://github.com/tvdeyen
- Robin Böning: https://github.com/robinboening
- Marc Schettke: https://github.com/masche842
- Hendrik Mans: https://github.com/hmans
- Carsten Fregin: https://github.com/cfregin
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!