Titan
... Is the front-end Website / Blog layer of the Tilas Publishing Platform.
Titan is the full user-facing front end for your Tilas platform which is built completely on the Spartan API. It can be thought of as the front-end blog which your users will interact with.
It's a fully responsive front-end that is highly customisable using environment variables and a configuration file. On top of standard blogging features (e.g. articles, posts, images, tagging, authors etc),
it also comes with cool features like social media share links, adsense, google analytics and an automatic sharing (AutoShare) feature that will manage your facebook sharing on a schedule (when configured via the Lantern CMS).
Titan can be installed on your own machine (for Development) or local or remote server or VM (for Staging or Production).
But we recommend you deploy it on DigitalOcean via a Dokku image, this way you can run Spartan, Lantern and Titan as Docker containers that support zero-down-time upgrades via GIT code pushes. This is cool, trust us :)
Getting Started: On-Premise Installation
Get Titan running on your own server by following these steps.
1) Setup Dependencies
The External requirements for Titan is basically only the Spartan API Layer but you should also pair a Facebook App with it if possible
- Spartan API > Setup the Spartan API Layer, which needs to be accessible to Titan via a public URL like http://spartan.yourdomain.com
- Facebook App> Ideally you will have a Facebook Page that will feed traffic to your site/blog. You should also create a new Facebook App for your Page and then get the App's Client ID and Secret which we will use to "Pair" Titan to your Facebook App/Page
2) Install Titan
You need a machine with nodeJS and npm installed
- Create a new folder to house your Titan installation
- Unpack Titan code into this directory
3) Install Dependencies
Set up all libraries and modules needed.
- cd into your directory
- Run npm install to install your dependencies
4) Configure Environment
Titan is powered by environment vars and a configuration file, but firstly lets setup the environment vars.
- Add your desired settings to settings files in scripts/development.sh or staging.sh or production.sh
- And then export your environmental variable into your current session like so: . scripts/development.sh
5) Site Specific Configuration
You can also change the UI/UX, turn on/off features etc via a site specific config file.
- Add your desired settings to the /config/default.json file.
6) Run Titan Server
You are now ready to power up the Titan server.
- Launch the server by running npm start
- Note down the URL:Port your server is running on
7) Start using it...
Titan is ready! (i.e your Site/Blog is Live!)
- Test your installation by visiting http://URL:Port
8) Update Site Style
Now that you see your default layout, you can update the CSS if you want.
- Open the /public/css/main.css file and scroll down to the bottom to add your CSS over-rides
9) What's Next?
You can do a few more things...
- Put Titan http://URL:Port behind a web server and map your domain name to it. e.g. http://your-titan-domain.com
- You can then setup Lantern to start adding content to your Blog
Development README
For more details on Titan installation and other technical details.