.. _overview:

=================
Birdland Overview
=================


Birdland is a simple and focused blogging application for use in
Django_ projects. It is designed to be simple to set up and to
play well with others.


Installation
============

Birdland depends upon a working installation of Django_ 1.0 or newer.

To install Birdland system-wide, use the included script named 
"setup.py" by running::

    $ python setup.py install

Note that system administrative privileges may be required. For
further installation options run::

    $ python setup.py install --help


Optional Dependencies
=====================

Birdland has optional tagging and markup capabilities that require
some third party libraries.

In order to use the tagging features a working installation of
django-tagging_ must be present.

To make use of the advanced markup processing capabilities of
Birdland the libraries of interest must be installed and working.
Birdland natively supports Textile_ through `Python Textile`_,
`reStructured Text`_ through docutils_, and Markdown_ through
markdown2_ or `markdown.py`_.


What Now?
=========

To get started using Birdland, see the :ref:`usage documentation <usage>`
found in this directory. Additional API documentation is included and broken
down into sections covering the included :ref:`views <views>`,
:ref:`template tags <templatetags>`, and :ref:`settings <settings>`.


.. _Django: http://www.djangoproject.com/
.. _django-tagging: http://code.google.com/p/django-tagging/
.. _reStructured Text: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
.. _docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/index.html
.. _Textile: http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/
.. _Python Textile: http://loopcore.com/python-textile/
.. _Markdown: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
.. _markdown2: http://code.google.com/p/python-markdown2/
.. _markdown.py: http://www.freewisdom.org/projects/python-markdown/
