Weblog Unleashed | 2

Weblog Unleashed

Installing Weblog

Grab the package

The distribution of Weblog is part of the article. You can grab it here. If you have problems, need support, or want customations, you can contact XIF Communications for commercial support.

Unpacking the distribution

First, unpack weblog-1.5.tar.gz. Unzip and untar that file with gunzip weblog-1.5.tar.gz and tar -xvf weblog-1.5.tar. If you're on a win32 box, I recommend using Winzip. You should now have a directory called weblog-1.5.

Required Modules

Before you can actually use Weblog, you must have the following modules installed on your system:

CGI::Carp
XML::RSS
XML::Simple
HTML::Template
HTML::Entities

You can obtain these modules from search.cpan.org if you don't already have a standard method for getting them. If you don't already know, an easy way to install modules in *nix is perl -MCPAN -e 'install XML::RSS' for example.

Alternatively, the installation script that comes with Weblog can install the modules for you if you have an Internet connection from the server you're installing it on. The installation script does not currently work on NT or Windows 2000. We are planning on writing a separate script in the future. Also, the installation script currently only configures a single channel. If you want to edit multiple channels, you'll have to add them to the XML configuration file by hand.

Step 1

In the weblog-1.5 directory, run the install.pl script as root. You will be presented with several screens of information and prompted to press RETURN several times. You will then be asked if you would like the required Perl modules installed automatically. This is done by loading the CPAN module from the command line. This will only work if the machine you're doing the installation on can access the Internet. If it can, press RETURN; otherwise, press n and RETURN.

Step 2

Next, you will be prompted to enter the user name that the Web server runs as. This is typically the nobody user in Apache. If you don't know, check. This is required so that the script can set proper file permissions for the data files. Press RETURN for the default, or enter the proper Web server user name.

Step 3

Next, you must select the directory to install the weblog.pl script in. If you have a standard install of Apache on RedHat Linux, the best place is probably /home/httpd/cgi-bin.

Step 4

You must enter the URL of the Weblog based on the the directory you installed it in Step 3. You must provide a real value here or the Weblog won't work properly.

Step 5

Next, select a directory that will hold three data directories used for holding lock files, temporary files, and archived revisions of the Weblog RSS channels. By default, this will be /home/httpd/cgi-bin.

Step 6

Now, the install scripts asks for a place to install the channel templates. Each channel can have its own custom templates. This enables you to control the look and feel of each output format for each channel. The directory you pick must be accessible by the Web server. By default, this is /home/httpd/html/templates. Some of you may want to install the templates in a different place that's not under the Web root directory, and that's perfectly fine as long as the Web user has read access to the directory and files.

Step 7

Next is the Channel configuration. The first thing you must do is select a name for the Weblog. This can be a word, phrase, sentence, etc.

Step 8

The next step is to select an abbreviated name for your Weblog. This should be a short name that does not contain any spaces or punctuation. The name will be used for the RSS XML Weblog files.

Step 9

Now, we must select the file name of the HTML Weblog file. This should be the full path to the file and should exist under the Web root directory if it will be accessible via the Web server. By default, this is /home/httpd/html/index.html.

Step 10

We also need to select the full path to the WML file for WAP phone users. By default, the value /home/httpd/html/wml/index.wml.

URL: https://www.webreference.com/perl/tutorial/17/3.html