phpWebLog 0.5.3 review
DownloadphpWebLog is a complete web news management system written in PHP
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phpWebLog is a complete web news management system written in PHP. All the content control is configurable with an web based administration section. Features include story moderation, threaded comments, templating/themes, polls, multi-language translations, RDF import.
Where to start. I am not a documentation writer by any means so will notattempt to enter that alter-ego at the moment. If you've gotten this far, you probably already know what this is, thus you can move on to the INSTALL.
For all else, despite whatever phpWebLog derives from, it's taking on it's own path and is becoming a portable news-driven user community site backend with flexibilty to integrate into site templates for almost total creative control. Almost all of the frontend site options are customizable through the administration areas, except for the database settings, which are found in include/common.inc.php.
With its internal template system and language translation files, the goal is to allow admins to design their news website how they want with phpWebLog without having to edit any PHP code.
The tarball is meant to be extracted directly into your document root, or wherever you plan to point the virtual host.
1. Extract archive
cd /var/local/www
tar zfvx /path/to/phpweblog-X.X.X.tar.gz
A directory called phpweblog-X.X.X/ will be created.
Set up your virtual host in the Apache config to /path/to/phpweblog-X.X.X/
2. Create database
create database:
$ mysqladmin -u username -p create MYDATABASE
You'll need to first create a database for phpWebLog to use. See the MySQL documentation for furthur help on doing this.
3. Prepare Configuration
Edit include/common.inc.php. The top portion needs some things configured before the system will work. Namely, the database settings, full path to your directory, and full URL to your web site.
It is VERY IMPORTANT that you change the password right away.
4. Setup database
Point your browser to http://yoursite.com/path/setup/
When prompted, enter the setup password that you defined from Step 3.
The setup script will ask you if this is an upgrade or new install. Choose INSTALL. Follow the instructions.
4. Permissions
There are a few files that need special permissions in order for them to be written to. This means they must be writable by the httpd process.
The following is a list of these files that will be overwritten by phpWebLog.
backend/
backend/layouts/
logs/error.log
logs/access.log
You can either manually chmod these files/directories to allow write access, or use the supplied fix_permissions.sh script located in the etc/ directory.
5. Customizing
If you want to change any html, go whack on header.inc.php or footer.inc.php
Please note that if you do so, upgrading to newer versions of phpWebLog may be more difficult. Most aspects of your rendered HTML will be coming from template files. You can edit these to your liking. No PHP is permitted in these template files.
Templates are located in /path/to/phpweblog/backend/template/
6. Security Notes
You should protect your etc/ and logs/ directory with the included .htaccess if at all possible. Although there is no crucial data to be found there, but you may not want to expose your error.log and access.log to the world.
The setup directory can be safely removed once your system is going for safe measure. Although it's protected, you may want to do this.
Security measures in phpWebLog are a mixture of referral checking, password checking, and md5 encryption.Since the administrative password is stored in the database, Your most vulnerable file would be include/common.inc.php since it contains the database password. You may want to chmod this file so that only the Apache owner can read this file. Security related questions and suggestions are always welcomed.
6. Support
The phpWebLog homepage is located at http://phpweblog.org.
There is also a mailing-list provided through SourceForge. http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/phpweblog-devel
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