Geeklog Forums

Yes, a newbie....I have not really tried anything like this before and as most I am having trouble following the instructions, (no matter how easy they be written). I keep going back and forth on my paths. Not getting good results. I believe I can meet all the prerequisites. If someone could give me a better step 1, step 2, step 3...It would be greatly appreciated. I am getting confused as I pop between my config.php, lib-common.php and my paths. Also the general steps, you know edit this file first, this second, ok...now this is how you call up and run the install.php file......just getting confused in a programmer's world. Thanks, Tommy22

Here ya go...maybe this will help you out. On your server, there is a public area and a non-public area. Most CMS' put all their files into the public area. Geeklog takes advantage of the non-public area to give the site an extra means of security. Files placed in the non-public area cannot be called directly by surfers using a web browser. After uncompressing Geeklog's tarball file, you should see a directory named public_html. These are the files which go into the public part of your web space. If you want Geeklog to run when you type www.mydomain.com, then place all the contents of public_html (NOT including this folder) right inside your upper directory. If you want Geeklog to run when you type www.mydomain.com/subdirname/ then place all the contents of public_html (NOT including this folder) inside that subdirectory instead. You can also run Geeklog multiple subdirectories down or off a subdomain. Wherever you decide, just place the contents of public_html right inside the corresponding directory. All the rest of the files in the tarball should be placed in the non-public part of your web space. You can create a special folder for them or you don't have to. Until you gain experience, put all the remaining directories/files in the same location. This will make your install much easier. Some hosts reserve the "admin" directory for their own control panel. If you are using shared hosting and they have done this, then change Geeklog's admin folder in your public area to another name like geekadmin (or whatever you want). Depending on the unzip software you used, you may have lost some empty folders and empty files when it uncompressed the tarball. The next step is to check whether these exist and if not create them and set permissions on each to 775. They include: Under the public area (at the same level as the admin directory): -- a directory named "backend" with one empty file named "geeklog.rdf". (without the quotes) Under the public area (inside the image directory) -- two empty directories named "userphotos" and "articles" located in the image directory. (without the quotes) Under the non-public area (at the same level as the system directory): -- directory named "logs" with two empty files "error.log" and "access.log". (without the quotes) After this, run Geeklog's checker located at http://www.mydomain.com/admin/install/check.php (replace www.domain.com/admin with the url to where your Geeklog's admin directory is located). This checker will verify whether the script can write to these directories. Depending on your server setup, you may have to change permissions to 777 instead of 775. Before touching config.php, you will need the following information: Your MySQL database name Your MySQL username Your MySQL password Your MySQL host address (usually localhost) If you are on a shared server, your host can provide this info to you. If a database has not been set up already, you will need to create one at this time. The next step is to figure out one url and two paths. This part for some reason confuses a lot of newbies. The url is what you want visitors to use in calling Geeklog on your site. If you placed your public_html files under www.mydomain.com, then the url is http://www.mydomain.com . If you placed them under a subdirectory, then the url is http://www.mydomain.com/subdirname . If you placed them under a subdirectory of a subdomain, then the url is http://subdomain.mydomain.com/subdirname . For this example, we'll just use http://www.mydomain.com . Obviously substitute your own domain name and directories here. Now the two paths. Go to your server and figure out the path starting from the root down to the directory corresponding to the url for calling up Geeklog on your site. In our example, it is http://www.mydomain.com. On an *nix box, the path will look something like this: /home/site/var/www/html/ . On a windows box, it will look something like this: C:/inetpub/wwwroot/geeklog/ . That's path #1. The second path is from the root down to where you placed the config.php file. In our example on an *nix box, it will either be under www, var, site, or home. It also can be placed in a subdirectory under any of these four. Let's say we placed config.php and the other directories/files right under www. In this example, the path will then look like this: /home/site/var/www/. On a windows box in our example, it will look something like this: C:/inetpub/wwwroot/. That's path #2. Again, substitute your own paths and don't use my fictious ones here. Now, you are ready to touch config.php. For a vanilla install, these are the minimum variables you have to change. Please leave the rest of the variables alone until you are up and running. $_DB_host = 'localhost'; // host address provided from your host $_DB_name = 'geeklog'; // database name provided from your host $_DB_user = 'username'; // database username provided from your host $_DB_pass = 'password'; // database pasword provided from your host $_DB_table_prefix = 'gl_'; // leave this as is or change it to whatever prefix you want on your tables $_CONF['path'] = '/home/site/var/www/'; // this is path #2 which you figured out above $_CONF['path_html'] = '/home/site/var/www/html/'; // this is path #1 which you figured out above $_CONF['site_url'] = 'http://www.mydomain.com'; // this is the url to call up Geeklog // I changed theadmin directory here to geekadmin because my fictious host has reserved admin for its control panel $_CONF['site_admin_url'] = $_CONF['site_url'] . '/geekadmin'; Okay, that's it for config.php. Verify you have opening and closing quotes plus a semicolon on these lines you just changed. For $_CONF['path'] and $_CONF['path_html'] make sure you have both a preceding and trailing slash on the paths. For windows boxes, make sure it starts with the drive and a colon. There are no trailing slashes on $_CONF['site_url'] and $_CONF['site_admin_url']. After your site is up and running you can go back and customize the other variables. Now, on to lib-common.php. Find this line here: require_once( '/path/to/geeklog/config.php' ); Change the '/path/to/geeklog/' to reflect path #2 from above. In the example used here, it would look like this: require_once('/home/site/var/www/config.php'); That's it for lib-common.php. Upload your changed config.php and lib-common.php overwriting the original files. After doing so, run the install program which is located under your Geeklog's admin directory. In our example it would look like this: http://www.mydomain.com/geekadmin/install/install.php . The install will ask for a path, this is where you enter path #2 which you figured out above. For this example, it would be: /home/site/var/www (without a trailing slash). Follow the instructions, and it should install okay. After getting the success screen, delete the "install" directory under your admin directory. Now, you can go back into config.php and customize it however you want. You should not have to change any of the other paths unless you moved directories/files around different than how they appear relative to each other in the tarball. This is not advisable if you're brand new. I think I briefly hit everything. If I missed something, please let me know. If you end up with any error messages, feel free to post them and someone will try to help figure it out.

Thank you. I will start over following these directions later today. I really appreciate your time and consideration. I am more designer than programmer but I should be able to follow your post with built in "checks". Have a great night. Tommy22

Excellent job rawdata!

I believed that I had all the paths correct. Maybe it's on the server's end. These are the new errors that I reveived after trying an install. PHP Fatal error: Failed opening required '/s101/home2/ancientwisdom/system/databases/mysql.class.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /s101/home2/ancientwisdom/geekconfig/system/lib-database.php on line 109 Fatal error: Failed opening required '/s101/home2/ancientwisdom/system/databases/mysql.class.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /s101/home2/ancientwisdom/geekconfig/system/lib-database.php on line 109

Finally fell into place, but some of the file folder structure was still confusing. Oh well broke out some old programmer's skills and pushed through it...trial and error. I should get the next one easier now that I can grasp the layout. Thanks to all!!!