Today’s focus

Select a well-supported nodejs CMS framework for Charchawale

Below are frameworks I tried out & the status of my attempts/ personal cons:

• PencilBlue - mongodb, easy to set up, very elementary theme, has inbuilt comments & (unchecked) OAuth Google plugin
• KeystoneJS - mongodb, less easy to set up, very elementary theme, lack OAuth Google Plugin, but repo has 9k+ stars (big community)
• Apostrophe - beautiful, but I haven’t set up locally, lack OAuth with Google
• Cody - use mysql, may or may not work since I ran the wrong server: jenkins (3000) instead. This was setup in my charchawale-keystone workspace on c9.io (yeah, the name :/)

Also, I attempted to use a few PHP frameworks:

• Open Source Social Network - php steep learning curve, unable to install locally
• Wordpress.org - plugins are not working, PHP steep learning curve
• Phundament - can’t set up without docker. docker is totally not for windows :(

Learning points

• Free domains for student:
• Namecheap - Only for certain US, Canada, Australia universities; free .me domains
• get.tech - Free for all emails with “.edu”

Most of these free domains are only free for the 1st year, while the yearly fee is quite high. :(

Set up MongoDB for windows:

Follow the official guide, then create a data folder in the folder of the new CMS application (preferably at root where the main js file for starting the application stays)

Start the MongoDB server locally after installation "C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.4\bin\mongod.exe" --dbpath data

Common errors

MongoError

Sample error message:

Mongoose connection "error" event fired with:
{ [MongoError: failed to connect to server [localhost:27017] on first connect]
  name: 'MongoError',
  message: 'failed to connect to server [localhost:27017] on first connect' }

Start the MongoDB server locally

"C:\Program Files\MongoDB\Server\3.4\bin\mongod.exe" --dbpath data

Taken server port

Sample error message:

Uncaught Exception detected : Error: listen EACCES 0.0.0.0:8080

Check among the js files in the root folder (normally config.js or server.js), change the default port to another value (e.g. 3000, 3223, etc.) and relaunch the site locally

What’s next

1. Try installing Google OAuth plugin for pencilblue
2. Implement onsite registration for both Keystone & PencilBlue (esp if Google OAuth works)
3. Learn how to make a new theme for the CMS framework of choice
4. Learn how to make a new plugin (QR login) for the CMS framework of choice
5. Figure out how to stop my jenkins server from running? Probably by restarting my laptop after a super long duration
6. Check which one allows easy video upload, preferably from URL of videos in Google drive
7. Deploy with Firebase, Google App, or Heroku