Hi, I'm getting ready to install xoops. When reading the instructions I have a question on #3.

3. For security considerations, you are encouraged to move directories "/xoops_lib" (for XOOPS libraries) and "/xoops_data" (for XOOPS data) out of document root, or even change the folder names.

I just want to check, does that mean before the install, I can rename those directories to anything I want and the install will still go smoothly?

Yes and no...

You will need to know where they are because the install program will need to know where they are..

If all you do is change their name you will want to write it down. The install script will look for them in their normal place and fill in a pathname. Then all you need to do is to change the default pathname to reflect the new pathname. Then click on another line to enter the change in and it will look for the directory. You will get a green mark for each path when you put the right path in.

thanks! I ran the install and everything went fine (well almost). I changed the location so it could find the files and everything went great UNTIL installing the mod messaging, so I skipped the mod and continued. went good said it was installed reminded you to delete install dir if there is one. And then you hit the FINAL next button.

Then guess what... error can't find one of the relocated dirs.. but the exact path it states is there and does exist.. I started the install again just in case... same problems at the end of the install

here is the error:
Error: Smarty error: the $compile_dir '/usr/home/adsg/public_html/xoops/htdocs/dat/xoopdat/caches/smarty_compile' does not exist, or is not a directory.

but that dir does exist and it is there!

If you are absolutely certain the link above doesnt contain any misspellings then check the folders to see if they are reachable from server ie. have rights to read/write/execute.

Try changing the folder with your ftp program to have rights 0777.

If this doesnt work try to open your mainfile.php and look through the lines for xoops_data + xoops_lib and see if the urls are correct there

Quote:

By the looks of this pathname you just copied the whole xoops directory into your public_html folder.

You will want to start over...

Best way to start out here is to put the contents of what is in htdocs into your public_html folder. The other files in your "xoops" directory are related to xoops but not necissarily intended to be installed like that.

You SHOULD be able to put the two directories in your pathname in the adsg folder so the pathname for example would end up being...

/usr/home/adsg/xoopdat/

Not sure if you need the trailing slash or not. And your server SHOULD allow access here... You also need to set the directories to read/write (0777) as mentioned and outliined in the install script.

Such a long line MIGHT be reaching the path limitation for file names as well otherwise(doubtful)..

Try it again and see what happens.

Thank you!

I had the rights at 0774, thinking that would be enough. I changed it to 0777 and that did the trick.

Now do I leave all those folders at 0777 or change them back now that the install completed?

red, that is the way my isp set up the directories.. they don't want us to put anything before public_html as public_html is the root of the website. All I know about that is adsg is my account and for some reason they added the public_html dir as the root of the site.

I think I might try that though whenever I get to a point to go live with this. But right now I have a live site and I am keeping xoops in the regular install directory so play with it and see if I can convert the regular site to xoops. I'm thinking once I go live that I will have to put the contents of htdocs in the root of my website is that correct?

Hey new problem: on the install where it gets to the place to install the modules there is module that is called "module file for not found" I went ahead and clicked yes to install it but something isn't right.

here is a pic of the install screen and a pic of the module maintaince/administration page once xoops installed. Is this correct??

http://adsg.org/xoop/xoop.htm

Quote:
Leave them alone.. The system needs them that way to access them correctly.

Quote:

Yes this is correct. The web server will look for those files there. However php can read from other directories thus the reason why you are able to "put them outside root" the idea is to move those two directories into a directory in your adsg directory thus "taking them out of document root". This means that the web server can not directly access these files thus making them more secure against hackers. In order for a hacker to gain access to them they would have to KNOW where the folders were and install a script into your document root and run it to access them directly.

If they are inside your document root it is WAY easier for a hacker to access them. If you do not have an index.html file in there theoretically it is pretty simple for a hacker to read the files in the directory. If they can access the directory then they can access your database information then you are screwed. Moving these outside of "document root" still allows them to be accessed by PHP but NOT by the webserver directly. Thus making it much harder for a hacker to access them which is a good reason to also rename the folders to make it significantly harder to guess.



Quote:

Ok, didn't see you mention this..
But yes all you should have to do is move the files from the htdocs to the public_html folder and change the mainfile.php file to reflect the correct file paths. You will likely have to also go into the cache directory and delete all files in there other then index.html (inside the three seperate folders... smarty_cache, smarty_compile and xoops_cache)

While you are doing this you could actually delete everything out of the xoops directory and move everything from the htdocs folder to the xoops folder. Then you would only have to use asgs.org/xoops to call the site...

Quote:

For some reason you don't have the profile module all on there.
You MAY not have all the files uploaded to your folder and so it is not seeing things. OR you do not have read/execute on the files in the profile directories. I am guessing at this point it is a permissions issue. This happens sometimes when you decompress files on a windows machine and upload them to your server via ftp. Which is why I always decompress the modules and such directly on my webserver. In MOST cases this will preserve the permissions as compressed.


By the way it is always a BAD idea to test things out on your live server.. It is VERY easy to setup something at home on your desktop pc and play with it there to make sure it works first.

Although it is generally a good idea to have a machine you are able to test things on that is as close operationally to your live server as possible.

wow.. that is good info! Thanks!!

I moved the files up to the xoops dir (htdocs is under xoops still) and renamed them. I don't think i have an index.htm file in all my directories (non xoops), I will definately go and check that out and put one in if there isn't one. Thanks! does it matter if it is .htm or .html??

I was thinking when going live I would put all the htdocs stuff right in the root (public_html) dir so the site would access at adsg.org. Not sure if that is a good idea though? that means I would have to put those other files in adsg above public_html. I can do that, but not sure if that would be appropriate???

Yeah.. you are right, I should be doing this on my computer. I did have apache triad running on my computer and used it for smf. But what happened is it didn't always work the same way as on the server and then my computer crashed and I haven't re downloaded apache triad.

This xoops attempt was going to be a "quick" look at xoops to see if it would work for my site. I stumbled upon xoops because I saw that smf offered a bridge to xoops. I had kinda given up on a cms a couple years ago when joomla broke with smf. Joomla went in the trash and SMF stayed as my users love smf and are very picky about their forum. So it wasn't worth upseting them. I, on the other hand want to slowly ween them to a cms with a forum.. the only way I will be able to do that and keep them happy as it transitions is by using a cms that has a bridge to SMF. So the other day when I saw the smf bridge to xoops, I figured I needed to check this out. But I was too impatient to set up a server on my pc.

but you are right, I'll have to make it a priority to get apache triad again and get it set up.

yep the profile dir under modules is NOT 0777, I changed it now to 0777, the modules dir is NOT 0777 should that one be 0777 too? Also, should I change the directories under modules and modules/profile to 0777 too?

oh.. I would love to decompress the files on my server instead of ftp!!! It takes forever to ftp them! I don't know how to do that though. Would you be willing to tell me how to do that?

Thank you so much for all this info! It is wonderful and very helpful! I really appreciate it very much!

I believe the right file permissions is 0744 for those files.

You need to have some sort of cpanel or other type of file manager to be able to decompress the files on the server.

If you look at the index.html files that come in xoops they have one line in them that basically make you go back where you came from.

Otherwise if you don't have a file that the server sees as being a displayable file it will show the file directory directly.

Yes, all of the files that were in the xoops/htdocs should reside just fine in your public_html and is the intended way to go.

Your server MAY have placed other files in that directory and if you want to save those you should download them and put them away somewhere in case you want to put them back on.

Remember to change your mainfiles.php to make sure the pathnames are correct when you do this.

The only files you should take out and put them further up the chain were the xoops_lib and xoops_data so the web server can't display them. Everything else is fine to be in the directory.

There is a module called xoopscare that has an option to put the default index.html in any directory there isn't one.

There are a variety of packages out there to put a server on your home machine. With windows I am using Xampp but I understand there are many others out there but Xampp seems to work well for me and has the later stuff in it then other packages seem to have.

If you upload modules, check for proper alignment.
There should be only one directory in the path /modules/mymodule/xoops_version.php between modules and xoops_version.php