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Setup of GeekLog on OS X...
Authored by: robg on Feb 28, '02 09:28:13AM

I'll post a full article when I get GL 1.3.x up and running in a few weeks, but here are the basics on getting a 1.1 install going. It should hold mostly true for 1.3.x as well.

GeekLog is packaged in two directory layers. The top layer represents an area that should technically (for security reasons) live outside the directories served by your Webserver. For a standard OS X installation, you should install the top level files (english.php, config.php, and logs in GL 1.1) in '/Library/WebServer'. Since these files live above the 'root' level of Apache, they're safe from being displayed by any web browser.

The second level contains all the PHP and HTML files for the site itself. In GL 1.1, this layer is in a folder named public_html; I'm not sure how it's packaged in 1.3. These files simply go into '/Library/WebServer/Documents', and then follow the included "chmod" instructions to make everything work.

Now just edit config.php and insert your path info in the relevant spots. In GL 1.1, "base" would be 'http://127.0.0.1/', "path" would be '/Library/WebServer/', logpath would be '/Library/WebServer/logs', etc. Also enter your mySQL path information.

That's pretty much all I've ever had to do (along with following 'chmod' instructions) to get GL running.

The downside to this structure is that it pretty much assumes GL is the only thing installed in your main webserver Documents folder. There are a number of ways around this, some more secure than others. At home, where I have about 15 different PHP apps running and my web server lives behind a firewall and Apache is blocked by the ISP, I'm fairly lazy about it -- I just created a "geeklog" folder within Documents and dropped the config.php file in there, then created a "web" folder within "geeklog" for the PHP and HTML files. Please note this is NOT a secure way to do this if your machine is publicly available! Your config.php file can technically be seen by the webserver now, and someone might be able to figure out a way to read its contents (although other PHP packages have their .config files within the server directory, so I'm not sure exactly how big a concern this is). I also add authorization so that none of my private pages are servable without a username and password, even if someone got through the firewall and ISP. But at that point, they'd probably have full control of my machine instead of web-only access, so the point is moot.

Although not as technically secure, this helps me keep the different programs separated from one another. You just need to change the paths to reflect the one additional level of directories. A better way to do this would be to set up virtual hosts to segregate the programs, but I've basically been avoiding the work involved in doing that!

-rob.



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Setup of GeekLog on OS X...
Authored by: Chas on Feb 28, '02 04:28:46PM

Hey thanks Rob, that's just the sort of tip I needed, I think I can hack it from there. Time to set up the newest PHP and MySQL binaries (and important security patches) and take another crack at this.
I really like many of the features in Radio Userland, it's easy to operate and fairly flexible, but best of all is the RSS upstreaming to the blog community, so your stories get indexed and are searchable across the blogland "cloud." I'm anxious to see if GeekLog has these features.
BTW, the new layout is great, the old one didn't render well in Mozilla, it tended to render out to about 120% of the window width so I had to scroll horizontally. It was an old Mozilla problem, maybe the newest Moz builds solved it, maybe it's the new layout, but I'm happy.



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