Founder, Inventor, Creator
A few months ago I wrote a new feature into Etherpad Lite but forgot to promote it, subsequently I keep recieving issues and requests for “how to hide authorship colors”. So here it is, it’s really easy
Just add:
?noColors=true to the end of your Etherpad Lite Pad’s URL IE
http://beta.primarypad.com/p/test?noColors=true
The other options including monospace are documented on the jQuery Etherpad Lite plugin I wrote
After nearly 2 years work at Primary Technology we’re happy to be a big part in the first major release of Etherpad Lite. Etherpad has been my first major open source contribution and has been the technology behind PrimaryPad since December 2009. All of the work I have done on this project has been on my evenings/weekends and I haven’t been paid. The idea is that I have a better understanding of Etherpad Lite which in turn means I can make PrimaryPad the best collaborative writing tool available for schools. Thankfully Google Docs has been a week competitor, after only a few months they lost the only talent they had that could work on the collaborative module so this gave me an opportunity and the momentum to really work hard. I have worked with Peter at Primary Technology (He has been getting a wage to work on Etherpad) and a bunch of other people, learning as I have gone along.
So what’s next? Now Etherpad Lite V1 is done and Peter is going back to Germany I have decide what my role will be in the project and if I want to continue working on open source ventures or not… I have a week or so to make this decision and many others before I go back to work at PrimaryT so watch this space 🙂
The highlights of the project so far is witnessing Etherpad being used to rewrite policies, constitutions and watching it being used for learning and sharing ideas. Etherpad is an extremely versatile tool and I believe the goal of it being the most widely adopted real time collaborative editor is feasible if we can get enough community engagement.
Since 2009 I have been working on an open source project, the project is called Etherpad and it’s goal is to provide an open collaborative document editing platform. When I first “joined up” I thought I could just help by fixing bugs and writing guides about how to deploy the software but this role quickly evolved.
I found myself taking on various roles and I thought I should share how diverse open-source projects are and the skills required in the hope to encourage more people to get involved even if your background isn’t in programming or software development.
Maintain the project website
Organize community events
Watch out for etherpad mentions on social networks and via web based alerts(Such as Google alerts)
Promote community awareness via social networks, video sharing websites.
Engage with new developers to encourage them to join the cause
Provide accomodation for community events
Create explanitory and tutorial videos
Establish relationships with competing projects
Ensure the project can recieve donations
Provide anonymous usage statistics about software usage
Provide a framework for development focused discussions
Decide on the project goals and mission statement
Develop the project, programming and graphics design
Review code submissions
Test new code
Ensure legal compliance
Organize conservancy membership
To change the welcome text in Etherpad Lite open up /local/node-v0.4.10/etherpad-lite/settings.json
Scroll to the defaultPadText value and edit it there.
You will need restart the Etherpad Lite service to make the new text appear.
Installing Etherpad Lite on Debian/Ubuntu clean.
Part 1 – Installing prerequisites
apt-get install build-essential python libssl-dev git-core git libsqlite3-dev gzip curl # you will be prompted to press Y
Part 2 – Installing nodeJS and NPM
mkdir ~/local cd ~/local wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.6.12/node-v0.6.12.tar.gz tar -zxvf node-v0.6.11.tar.gz cd node-v0.6.11 ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local/node make make install echo 'export PATH=$HOME/local/node/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile echo 'export NODE_PATH=$HOME/local/node:$HOME/local/node/lib/node_modules' >> ~/.profile source ~/.profile
Part 3 – Installing Etherpad Lite and running it
git clone git://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite.git etherpad-lite/bin/run.sh # You will be prompted to type Etherpad Lite rocks my socks.
You are now finished installing and Etherpad Lite should be running, you should be able to access it on http://localhost:9001
Only if you have an old version of Debian (Lenny) or Ubuntu then you will need to install sqllite from backports. To do open /etc/apt/sources.list and add:
deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports lenny-backports main
Save and close the file then type
apt-get update apt-get -t lenny-backports install libsqlite3-dev
You may need to rebuild your modules if you have an error, to do this do an rm -Rf node_modules and run the startup script (run.sh) again!
Want to run Etherpad Lite as a service? Follow this guide. Make sure you do a chown -R etherpad-lite on the etherpad-lite folder if you have run it as root or any other user before hand..