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Table of Contents
Requirements
We're going to evaluate several CMS packages to see which one best meets our needs. We'll use the following criteria:
- Must be Open Source / Free Software
- Active community, so we know it'll be well supported into the future
- Looks like a "normal" web site, with mostly static content
- Packages like Plone and PHP-Nuke pretty much fail in this respect
- Most Wikis fail in this respect
- Editing a page is moderately easy, using wiki-like syntax or a WYSIWYG
- We don't want to have to edit raw HTML, but would like the ability to
- Accounts/ACLs limit who can edit pages, on a per-directory basis
- Different groups of people will have different access rights
- Flexible authentication (LDAP, passwd, MySQL, etc.)
- URLs look like URLs of a "normal" web site
- Allows us to mirror the structure of our existing web site
- Uses Apache mod_rewrite, but the CMS needs to be aware of the rewriting
- Should use modern standards and practices, such as XHTML and CSS
- CSS is essential to making the site work well
- Our current site is a mess of FONT tags
- XHTML isn't necessary; valid HTML 4.01 would suffice
- Not too hard to install or customize
- PHP or Perl (mod_perl) preferred
- Nothing more complex storage-wise than MySQL or PostgreSQL
- Java-based systems are probably too hard to use
- Zope is difficult to get working right
- Expandable, so we can add non-static pages later
- We'll probably want to add things such as a calendar of events, polls, etc.
- Bonus points if it's easy to integrate 3rd-party packages
- Site search
- Templates, so all pages have te same structure
Other things that would be nice:
- Site statistics
- RSS feeds
- Per-user configuration
Drupal
These instructions detail how to install Drupal (4.5.2) on our Debian 3.1 (RC) system.
Requirements
- Apache
- PHP (currently 4.x only)
- MySQL (I think it supports 4.0 and 4.1)
Installation
Download Drupal:
# cd /home/www/dev.sluug.org/ # wget http://drupal.org/files/project/drupal-4.5.2.tgz
Unpack the program:
# tar xfz drupal-4.5.2.tgz # cd drupal-4.5.2/
Change the ownership of the files:
# chown -R www-data:www-data .
Create a directory for uploaded attachments:
# mkdir files # chown -R www-data:www-data files # chmod 2755 files
Create MySQL database (replace $DRUPAL_MYSQL_USER with the real username, and $DRUPAL_MYSQL_PWD with the real password):
# mysqladmin create drupal # mysql GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupal.* TO $DRUPAL_MYSQL_USER@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '$DRUPAL_MYSQL_PWD'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; \q
Load the Drupal Database Schema (enter password when prompted):
# mysql -u $DRUPAL_MYSQL_USER -p drupal < database/database.mysql
Edit config file (includes/conf.php):
$db_url = "mysql://$DRUPAL_MYSQL_USER:$DRUPAL_MYSQL_PWD@localhost/drupal"; $base_url = "http://dev.boochtek.com/drupal-4.5.2";
Launch the site (http://dev.boochtek.com/drupal-4.5.2/). You should see the Drupal page.
Click on the link to create a new account. This first account will have full admin priveleges. Call the account 'admin'. Enter an email address. For the very first account, the password will be randomly generated and printed to the screen. Record the password.
Configuration
Login to the site with the new 'admin' account and the password that was selected for you. Make sure .htaccess is set properly, before trying to get Clean URLs to work.
Administer/Settings
Name: Saint Louis UNIX Users Group E-mail address: webhead@sluug.org Slogan: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Systems Mission: To promote Open Source, Open Standards, and Open Systems. Footer message: Copyright 2005 by Saint Louis UNIX Users Group (TODO: REMOVE) (Development Site) Anonymous user: Guest Default front page: home Clean URLs: Enabled (Make sure mod_rewrite is working before enabling this!) Error reporting: Write errors to the log Discard log entries older than: 4 weeks Cache support: Enabled (TODO: haven't tried it yet) Default time zone = -0600 (TODO: Is this correct?) Long date format = Weekday, Month 00, 2000 - 1:56pm
Administer/Modules
Enable: comment, forum, help, menu, node, page, path, ping, poll, profile, queue, search, statistics, story, taxonomy, throttle, tracker, upload (Save so you can enable throttling.) Enable throttling: comment, forum, help, poll, profile, tracker, upload
Administer/Blocks/List
Enable everything but Recent Comments and Throttle Status. Check Custom for everything but Navigation, User Login, and Throttle Status. Set weights: Navigation: -10 User login: -9 Most recent poll: -5 Syndicate: 10 Change to the right side: Popular content Most recent poll Who's new Syndicate
Administer/Users/Configure/Settings
Public registrations: Visitors can create accounts but administrator approval is required.
Administer/Users/Configure/Roles
Add roles: administrator board member officer contributor gold member silver member bronze member voting member
Administer/Users/Configure/Permissions
Give administrators all rights. TODO: Give other rights to other users.
Administer/Users/Configure/Profile
Add single-line text field: Category: Personal Info Title: Real Name Form name: profile_realname Explanation: Please enter your real name. Weight: -5 Visibility: Private field The user must enter a value. Visible in user registration form. Add single-line text field: Category: Personal Info Title: Location Form name: profile_location Explanation: Please enter the city (and state) you live in. (For consistency, please spell out the word "Saint" if applicable.) Weight: -3 Visibility: Public field, content shown on profile page and on member list pages. Page title: City (TODO: Not sure what to put here.) The user must enter a value. Visible in user registration form. TODO: More user info.
Administer/Users/Configure/Access Rules
Administer/Users/Configure/Settings
Administer/Settings/Search
Minimum word length to index: 1 Noise words: the, and, or, not, a, to, he, she, it, I, me, they, them, their, my, we
Administer/Settings/Statistics
Enable access log: Enabled Discard access logs older than: 4 weeks Count content views: Enabled Display counter values: Enabled Number of day's top views to display: 5 Number of all time top views to display: 5
Administer/Content/Configure/Default Workflow
Page: R/W comments, publish, promote, sticky, revision Story: R/W comments, publish, promote, revision
Administer/Comments/Configure/Settings
Default comments per page: 30 Comment controls: Display above and below the comments Anonymous poster settings: Anonymous posters may leave their contact information
Administer/Themes/Select
Enable all themes.
Notes
I'm not terribly confident with all the configuration choices I made. This is basically a rough first cut.
TODO
Create a cron job to activate the cron tasks (per install instructions):
# crontab -e 0 * * * * wget -O - -q http://dev.sluug.org/drupal/cron.php
Determine more/better configuration settings.
Periodic backups of the entire content of the site.
Move from http://dev.sluug.org/drupal-4.5.2/ to http://dev.sluug.org/drupal/, or possibly even http://dev.sluug.org/.
Can we create sections of the site that are only visible to certain accounts? For example, it would be very handy (I'd go so far to say that it's a requirement for a CMS for use) to have a section that only officers can read (for things like phone numbers, etc.).
Credits
Initially installed, configured, and documented by Craig Buchek, 2005-02-23.
Mambo
These instructions detail how to install Mambo (4.5.2) on our Debian 3.1 (RC) system.
Requirements
- Apache (mod_rewrite recommended)
- PHP >= 4.1.0 (XML and zlib support required)
- MySQL
Installation
Download Mambo:
# cd /home/www/dev.sluug.org/ # wget http://mamboforge.net/frs/download.php/4004/MamboV4.5.2-Stable.tar.gz
Unpack the program:
# mkdir mambo # cd mambo/ # tar xfz ../MamboV4.5.2-Stable.tar.gz
Create the .htaccess file:
# mv htaccess.txt .htaccess
and edit it to add the line:
RewriteBase /mambo
Change the ownership and permissions of the files:
# chown -R www-data:www-data . # chmod -R ug+wX .
Create the MySQL database (replace $MAMBO_MYSQL_USER with the real username, and $MAMBO_MYSQL_PWD with the real password):
# mysqladmin create mambo # mysql GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mambo.* TO $MAMBO_MYSQL_USER@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '$MAMBO_MYSQL_PWD'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; \q
Launch the site (http://dev.boochtek.com/mambo/). You should see the Mambo installer page. Make sure all the pre-install checks are green (correct them and refresh the page to check them again), and hit Next. Accept the GPL license terms and hit Next. Tell the program how to access the MySQL database:
Host Name: localhost MySQL User Name: $MAMBO_MYSQL_USER MySQL Password: $MAMBO_MYSQL_PWD MySQL Database Name: mambo (accept the defaults for the rest) and hit Next
Enter the name of the site: St. Louis UNIX Users Group, and hit Next. Enter the requested info about the site.
URL : http://dev.sluug.org/mambo Path: /home/www/dev.sluug.org/mambo Email: webmaster@sluug.org Record (and change, if desired) the admin password. Leave the chmod permission settings alone. (TODO: Not sure what these mean.) Hit Next.
Click on View Site. You should see a message telling you to remove the installation files. Do that:
# rm -rf installation/
Refresh the site. You should see the site's home page.
Configure
Browse to the site's front page. Hit the Administrator menu item on the left. Log in as admin (using the password given earlier in the installation).
Hit the Global Configuration button.
Locale Country Locale: en_US Metadata Global Site Meta Description: St. Louis UNIX Users Group Global Site Meta Keywords: St. Louis, Saint Louis, UNIX, Users Group, User Group, Linux, LUG, Open Source Cache Caching: Yes Statistics Statistics: Yes Log Content Hits by Date: Yes Log Search Strings: Yes SEO Search Engine Friendly URLs: Yes (make sure you have gotten the .htaccess file correct)
Hit Save.
TODO
Finish configuration.
Try some plugins, modules, templates, etc.
Upgrade to Drupal 4.6.0.
Try some other CMSes. Perhaps these:
- XOOPS
- Bricolage
Credits
Initially installed, configured, and documented by Craig Buchek, 2005-03-10.
