Geeklog Forums

After playing for a few days and countless hours, practically destroying half the files on my website I wish to ask anyone if they know where or how to find instructions that a noobie might possibly be able to handle to install a simple forum.

Installing plugins seems to be the worst of any of the cms's I have tried as a novice.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know if I can get back here so my e-mail is webmaster@mypeoplesvoice.com

Thanks to anyone in advance.

Well if your not going to check back it is kind of hard to help you out...

Anyway...

I have installed many plugins including Forum and Media Gallery on several sites. For the most part all the plugins I use come from Portal Parts or gllabs and the included instructions have always been more than adequate.

All I can suggest is that you take your time and go one step at a time and I can't see you having many problems. If you have a specific problem please post details and I am sure someone will be willing to help.

In my experiance vague posts about a non-specific problem that do nothing but criticize don't usually get a lot of response.


-Eric

I think the installaton might be beyone me as I have been able to master other programs to the point where I could make them work.

I am in no way insulting or condemning the Geeklog or the plugins. I only mentioned this here because I do feel some of the others might be simpler for a new person.

I just don't know what I am missing in the instructions that is making it impossible for me to get intstalled.

As kingsley already said: Please try to be less vague.

What did you do? What did you expect to happen? What happened instead?

If you get any errors post them here.

Remember that we can't see your site and we don't know what you did (or did not do). So it's impossible to write any sort of helpful reply.

Oh, and I assume you did see this?

bye, Dirk

I checked the links everyone left. Haven't had a chance to try a total reinstall but the information supplied was super and I thank everyone for the help.

An error has occurred:
2 - main(/home/mypeople/public_html/system/lib-portalparts.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory @ /home/mypeople/public_html/plugins/forum/functions.inc line 54

I got this error, can anyone tell me if I have a corrupt file or if it is a file in the wrong place?

Thanks

From the included readme.html file with the forum distribution:

Step 5 - Update or copy the lib-portalparts.php file

The plugins from portalparts use a number of common functions that are placed in the lib-portalparts.php file. Copy the file from the plugin archive to your system folder where there are other lib-xxxxx.php files


Make sure you copied the lib-portalparts.php to your Geeklog system/ directory. Other files already in the system/ directory include; lib-comment.php, lib-custom.php, lib-database.php, etc...

Hope this helps.

Thanks!
Mark

This is my first install of anything. Your suggestion put the forum on the list of plugins. I haven't tried to edit or anything yet but it worked. I can't thank you enough.

I know this is more than I should ask in here but I almost had it.

I copied the lib file and got it to the forum but I obviously don't have the files in the proper place.

I did the directory Public_html/forum
and the Public-html/admin/plugins

My belief is that I am putting the wrong files in those folders.

If anyone has time and if there is some simple way to explain what files go where I would appreciate the help. I don't expect anyone to spend a lot of time, basically teaching me how to install this.

Kelly,

Try these instructions, they are for the Media Gallery plugins, but the concept is the same as the forum. Where you copy the public_html and admin files is identical (except use forum as the directory name instead of mediagallery) to that of the forum install.

The forum install also requires 2 additional steps as outlined in its documentation, copying the themefiles and the system (lib-portalparts.php) file. But, if you get the others copied correctly, I'm willing to bet you'll figure out the themefiles too.

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks!
Mark

I appreciate all the help. It is obvious to me that it is beyond what I can do. Repeated the steps for probably 12 - 14 hours off and on and no positive results.

No need to reply, just wanted to say thanks for trying even though I am too ignorant of computing to accomplish this, what should be a relatively simple task.

It doesn't help that the install for the forums is a bit non-standard in places.

I don't know what a standard one is, php-nuke or one of them includes a forum, joomla has the automatic install.

I like the way Geeklog works but can't think of any more places to put the files and still nothing works.

Mark, the information and links you supplied got me to at least see the install on the admin page, then the correction you told me abut lib file worked.

I have reached the point where I hate to give up but will get ulsers pretty soon.

I made the two directories, I did my best to copy the files where told, I updated the lib file and the themes. Still nothing.

Can it be something with the Fantasticl install?

This is really starting to get to me.

No, I mean the Geeklog forums plugin has a few non-standard requirements for making it work with Geeklog compared to most other Geeklog plugins.

Now, the basics: Most plugins have three sets of files: the public_html files, the admin files and all the rest. When you install a plugin you copy all the files to /path/to/geeklog/plugins/name_of_plugin.

In that directory will (possibly) be an admin and a public_html directory. You now have to move those two directories to the correct location.

The admin directory goes to /path/to/geeklog/public_html/admin where it is renamed name_of_plugin. So you end up with directories in /public_html/admin/name_of_plugin. If you have a /public_html/admin/name_of_plugin/admin directory, you did it wrong.

The same thing happens in the public_html directory for the plugin's public files.

At this point, most plugins will show up on the install part of the plugins page.

The forums have a few more steps. I don't know them all but the most important one is to move /path/to/geeklog/plugins/forum/lib-portalparts.php to /path/to/geeklog/system.

If you have gotten this far, the forums should work once you click install on the plugin page. I would suggest you start with a clean geeklog install since you may have a partial forums install in your database and the forums installer may not be able to handle that.

Well, I really want the forum and U seem very willing to help.

I presently have a clean install of geeklog, about my 15th one.

One thing I don't see under my www is any public_html folder.

I should open www, make a new folder public_html?

so it would be www/public_html/forum is what I am asking.



Next under www/admin/plugins I put another copy of the complete forum?

If this is correct, and someone replys I will to steps slowly and maybe I can do it for the one last time.

If I get a reply, maybe I won't have to keep doing it over and over.

Kelly,

This might help you out a bit...Think of www as public_html. Since you have your site installed in the www directory, everywhere you see public_html in the installation instructions, substitute www in its place.

So, if the instructions say:

Create a directory called forum under your public_html directory

You would actually read this as:

Create a directory called forum under your www directory

When the instructions say:

Copy the files (contents) from the new plugin's public_html directory to the forum directory you just created under your sites main public_html directory

You should read that as:

Copy the files (contents) from the new plugin's public_html directory to the forum directory you just created under your sites main [bwww[/b] directory


This means you would copy all the files from the forum distribution's public_html to your www/forum/ directory.

You would then copy all the files from the forum's admin/ directory to your www/admin/plugins/forum/ directory.

Hopefully this will get you one step closer.

Good luck!
Mark

ok I have a full copy of forum under www/forum


I copied just the admin file to www/admin/plugin

Is this correct so far?

Looking for theme directory, under layout?

as in www/layout/professional/

I think this is one of my lost places,

Kelly,

I think you are close, but not quite there...



This may be correct, let's just double check to be sure... If you were to unzip the forum plugin distribution, it would look like this:



What you want to do is copy all the files in the public_html directory in the forum distribution into your www/forum/ directory (remember you had to create the forum/ directory first).



You need to copy forum/admin/*.* to www/admin/plugins/forum/, so you first had to create the directory forum under www/admin/plugins/.



Now you're talking! You want to copy all the files from the themefiles directory in the forum distribution to the www/layout/professional/ directory.

I think you are getting close!

Thanks!
Mark

Under www/forum I have all the forum files in forum

under www/forum/admin/plugins, I have just the empty plugin folder.

then it goes www/forum/ and under that is as follows

Admin
Forum
Public_html
sql
sys
temp
themes

Then a bunch of php files


Under www/plugins the forum is not showing,