Thursday 13 November 2008

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...

Monday 10 November 2008

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.

Thursday 6 November 2008

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.

Wednesday 5 November 2008

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.)