Hayfever is a blosoxm-inspired content management system written for mod_perl and apache.

I approved of the Tao of Blosxom, I really like the whole ‘the filesystem is the database’ thing, and metadata can only be good. But as other people have pointed out, actually reading the blosxom code gives me a headache. And I wanted to do evil, evil things with it.

So I rewrote the core idea as a mod_perl handler. If you use it to view a folder, it’ll give you a blosxom-style ‘recently changed files’ list, with contect on the file, soon to be file-type specific (ie text files get a few lines of context, images get thumbnails, etc) and if you view a file, it’ll do it’s best to show you the contents of the file in some sensible way. The intention is that there’s nothing clever you have to do as an end-user of the module - put files in folders, mod_perl handle the root of the folders, and things Just Work. I hope.

Later, the mod_perl stuff got dropped, code got changed, etc. Hayfever is the Idea That Will Not Die, apparently - I keep trying to move back to off-the-shelf solutions, but the underlying idea of Hayfever is so damn shiny that I can’t bring myself to throw it away. Nowadays it’s a nice CGI script, reasonably fast (I’m bottlenecked on Template Toolkit, alas), and capable of doing most things I ask of it.

The absolute best version of Hayfever to use is the one in subversion, which is a pity, but I’m hoping to do a real release Real Soon Now. Of course, I’ve been saying that for years.