Adding a subsite in Silverstripe

Assuming you've got the subsites module installed and created your first subsite 'Template' manually, you can now go about adding subsites!

Click on the Sub-sites tab at the top of the Silverstripe CMS to add a new subsite.

You will see this panel on the left hand side. Just enter a name and subdomain and click add.

You can see I've already added two domains here which point to http://sub1.localhost and http://sub2.localhost

Each new subsite is based on a 'Template', so in this case will have the domain 'mysite.com' appended.

I first tried setting this up in my home directory but Silverstripe could not resolve addresses of the form http://sub1.localhost/~username/

Once I installed Silverstripe to the main apache Documents folder it worked no problem, i.e. Silverstripe will resolve http://whatever.localhost/

In my case, because I'm developing locally I added the following entries to my /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1    sub1.localhost
127.0.0.1    sub2.localhost

Happy subsiting...

Install Silverstripe 'Subsites' module

The following steps worked for me when installing the Silverstripe Subsites module:

1. Create a directory in your root silverstripe installation. '~/Sites/silverstripe/subsites'

Download, and unzip the code into this directory. I deleted the 'trunk' directory to keep things tidy.

2. Ensure every folder in your silverstripe hierarchy has the user '_www' read/write access

3. There is a problem linking the Group table in the database, so for now comment it out in 'silverstripe/subsites/_config.php' so it looks like this:

<?php

/**
* The subsites module modifies the behaviour of the CMS - in the SiteTree and Group databases - to store information
* about a number of sub-sites, rather than a single site.
*/

Object::add_extension('SiteTree', 'SiteTreeSubsites');
// Hack - this ensures that the SiteTree defineMethods gets called before any of its subclasses...
new SiteTree();
Object::add_extension('ContentController', 'ControllerSubsites');
Object::add_extension('LeftAndMain', 'LeftAndMainSubsites');
Object::add_extension('LeftAndMain', 'ControllerSubsites');
//Object::add_extension('Group', 'GroupSubsites');
Object::add_extension('File', 'FileSubsites');

?>

Then visit http://localhost/silverstripe/db/build?flush=1 This will set up the initial database tables for the subsites module.


5. We need to manually modify the Group table using the following SQL. Note that 'Group' is a reserved keyword in mysql so make sure you wrap it in backquotes:

alter table `Group` add SubsiteID int(11) not null default 0;

6. We also need to manually insert the first 'Template' into the Subsite table:

insert into Subsite (ID, ClassName, Created, LastEdited, Subdomain, Title, Domain)
values ("", "Subsite_Template", NOW(), NOW(), "newsubdomain", "newtitle", "mysite.com");

7. Now you can uncomment your 'silverstripe/subsites/_config.php' file and add the following two lines so that it looks like this:

<?php

Object::add_extension('SiteTree', 'SiteTreeSubsites');
// Hack - this ensures that the SiteTree defineMethods gets called before any of its subclasses...
new SiteTree();
Object::add_extension('ContentController', 'ControllerSubsites');
Object::add_extension('LeftAndMain', 'LeftAndMainSubsites');
Object::add_extension('LeftAndMain', 'ControllerSubsites');
Object::add_extension('Group', 'GroupSubsites');
Object::add_extension('File', 'FileSubsites');

Director::addRules(100, array(
'admin/subsites/$Action/$ID/$OtherID' => 'SubsiteAdmin',
));
Object::addStaticVars( 'LeftAndMain', array( 'extra_menu_items' => array(
'Sub-sites' => array("intranets", "admin/subsites/", 'SubsiteAdmin')
)));

?>

For good measure, visit http://localhost/silverstripe/?flush=1 to make sure any database changes have been picked up.

8. Then visit http://localhost/silverstripe/admin?flush=1 to reload your CMS. You should now have the 'Sub-Sites' tab in the Silverstripe admin CMS along with a dropdown in the top right hand corner that allows you to select which subsite you are currently working on.

Documentation for this module is in alpha ;-) , so if anyone has any tips on refining these installation instructions please let me know.

iconv will not link when compiling PHP on OSX

When trying to compile PHP on OSX Leopard, the ./configure command completed successfully but iconv would not link....

Undefined symbols:
"_iconv_close", referenced from:
_php_iconv_string in iconv.o
_php_iconv_string in iconv.o
__php_iconv_strlen in iconv.o
__php_iconv_strpos in iconv.o
__php_iconv_mime_decode in iconv.o
__php_iconv_mime_decode in iconv.o
__php_iconv_mime_decode in iconv.o
_zif_iconv_substr in iconv.o
_zif_iconv_substr in iconv.o
_php_iconv_stream_filter_dtor in iconv.o
_zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
_zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
"_iconv_open", referenced from:
_php_iconv_string in iconv.o
__php_iconv_strlen in iconv.o
__php_iconv_strpos in iconv.o
__php_iconv_mime_decode in iconv.o
__php_iconv_mime_decode in iconv.o
_zif_iconv_substr in iconv.o
_zif_iconv_substr in iconv.o
_zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
_zif_iconv_mime_encode in iconv.o
_php_iconv_stream_filter_factory_create in iconv.o
ld: symbol(s) not found
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [sapi/cli/php] Error 1

I believe this is a problem with the default /usr/include/iconv.h header file in Leopard.

I have a different version of iconv.h installed with Fink which puts all it's software in /sw
I added the following to the ./configure command's options, as suggested here.

--with-iconv=shared,/sw

This would not work unless 'shared' is specified. Perhaps this is because Fink compile iconv as a shared library.

Broken Web Sharing / Apache on OSX Leopard

I recently installed Leopard on my macbook and wanted to enable Web Sharing but when I visited http://localhost, Firefox gave me the following error:

Failed to Connect
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at io.

I tried to uncheck/check Web Sharing in System Preferences. I also tried stopping/starting Apache on the command line with no luck.

Finally I used this resource on DIYMacServer to reinstall Apache on my machine. It now works like a charm, thanks Richard!

(This all came about because I want to install SilverStripe which suggests using MAMP, but I did not want multiple versions of Apache installed on my machine.)