I am playing around with XOOPS as a potential CMS for a project I am working on. The project is a redesign for an already existing website. There are hundreds of pages of content that will need to be migrated from the old site to the new. There are multiple sectors if you will of content. When I am done each sector will be maintained by a small team of people (1-2) who have a specialty in that area. Right now, I am not concerned with the form or style of the content being migrated as I expect that to change with the redesign. However I am concerned with how XOOPS will organize and store all of it.

My initial mockup which was coded by hand before XOOPS became a possibility for this redesign consists of a three column layout with main navigation and search features in the left column; copy/content in the middle; and then sub navigation on the right side. I have been trying to replicate this design with Xoops. So for example a navigation item on the left column might be “Computers” and if it were clicked the middle column would change to something of an index page for the “Computers” section and the right column would now have a second navigation menu dealing just with the content of this section.

I am at something of a loss right now as to what modules I could use to put this all together. I am playing around with Xpress to incorporate blogging into the website. But had been trying tinyd (hacked tiny content) for migrating the bulk of what is already there to the new XOOPS design. I am also experimenting with multimenu as a hopeful substitute for the rather poor default navigation scheme. What’s gotten me nervous about this is the 8 menu limit in multimenu as well as the poor organization offered by the whole system.

From what I can tell once my content is migrated into XOOPS there is going to be no good way to get it out. Someone working on the “Computers” subsection will have to remember that Computers is something esoteric like Tinyd03. Furthermore if I ever want to extract my raw data from this system I’m going to have to dig through all the different subfolders of my modules folder to find it. Sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen. I am not storing the raw data in the database as binary right now.

SO long story short – What Modules should I be using to pull this all together? I have seen XOOPS powered sites before that didn’t have retarded navigation like you get by using the default bar how did they do it? Can XOOPS handle a large volume of content?

OS: XP
PHP: 5.1.1
MySQL: 4.1
xoops: [RECOMMENDED] XOOPS 2.0.13.2

I recently installed XOOPS on a development box that I set up and configured. It is a windows xp box and like many people on this forum I installed Apache MySQL and PHP myself.

OS: XP
PHP: 5.1.1
MySQL: 5.0.18-nt
xoops: [RECOMMENDED] XOOPS 2.0.13.2 full version

My install got hung up on the database creation for some time and it wasn’t until I realized that though MySQL was installed and could run properly that it was not enabled in PHP that I was able to successfully install Xoops. This whole issue is incredibly frustrating/confusing because the documentation on php5 claims that support for MySQL is built in however that is not entirely true. If there had been even a reminder to ensure that MySQL is enabled with whatever version of PHP one has installed it would have saved me a day of teeth grinding and hair pulling ><

Please consider including the following bit of information somewhere near the top of this forum either in the checklist or in the database connection issue thread:

x) Ensure that MySQL API support for PHP is enabled and working.

1) With error handling turned on run this one line script from your server
<?PHP mysql_connect(address, username, password); ?>

Did you see a blank page or this error message “Call to undefined function mysql_connect()“ If you did your installation of PHP does not yet properly support MySQL.

2)Alternately you can infer the status of MySQL API support by running this one line script from your web server.

<?PHP phpinfo(); ?>

This script will output a large amount of information about the current state of your PHP installation. Specifically we are concerned with a separate section of the output called appropriately enough MySQL. Don’t be alarmed if you do not see this section it just means that as we suspected MySQL API support needs to be installed to PHP and enabled.

Installing and enabling MySQL API support is going to be a little different depending on your versions but if they are anywhere near my version numbers listed above you can try these steps.

3) In your php.ini file edit the extension directory (extension_dir) to point to the full path of the ‘ext’ directory of your php installation. For me this looks like (extension_dir = "c:\php\ext")

4) Next under Dynamic Extensions uncomment the line ‘;extension=php_mysql.dll’ it should now read ‘extension=php_mysql.dll’ Depending on your versions you may have to add this line of code to the php.ini file manually. At this time you should check the ‘ext’ directory of your installation of php to ensure that the .dll does exist on your drive. Depending on what version of PHP you installed you may have to download php_mysql.dll and put it in your ‘ext’ directory.

5) Finally make sure that the directory containing php_mysql.dll is in your PATH environment variable as seen by your web server. Windows users can set this path via the control panel. From the System Properties window click on the advanced tab->Environmental Variables-> Under ‘System Variables’ edit ‘Path’ to include the directory of your PHP installation ‘c:\php’ You will then need to restart your computer. If starting Apache causes an error similar to (unable to load dynamic library 'c:\php\ext\php_mysql.dll') ensure that the .dll exists in the specified directory; the PATH environment variable is properly set; And that you have rebooted since setting the PATH variable. Windows users if you still get an error when starting Apache service you can as a last resort try copying the .dll to your windows/system32 directory.

6) If you successfully launched Apache service with no errors repeat step two and you will most likely now see a MySQL section outputted by the phpinfo() function. You are now ready to install Xoops. If you have tried everything here and MySQL support is still not enabled and you resent the new error you get every time you launch Apache you can go back to step four and comment ‘extension=php_mysql.dll’ to stop the error.

Sorry forgot to include that info:
OS: XP
PHP: 5.1.1
MySQL: 5.0.18-nt
xoops: [RECOMMENDED] XOOPS 2.0.13.2 full version

That fix in the link corrected my first problem but it still snags when it attempts to build the database. Any ideas?

I am trying to install XOOPS localy on a test server because the production server of a project I am working on will be upgrading to cpanel in the near future and XOOPS will be available to me there.

I have looked through the documentaion and all the READ THIS FIRST type posts on this forum. My error handling is turned on.

I encountered a number of problems from a fresh install and have been able to repeat them. I will list them in order and document them as best as I can.

1) Everything is fine for the first few screens folders and files it wants check out as writeable etc. but when i get to saving configuration data i get red lights.

File ../mainfile.php overwritten by ../mainfile.dist.php.
Failed writing constant C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/htdocs.
Failed writing constanthttp://localhost.
Failed writing constant mysql.
Failed writing constant xoops.
Failed writing constant localhost.
Failed writing constant root.
Failed writing constant __________.[displays db pw correctly]
Failed writing constant zoodat.
Failed writing constant 0.
Failed writing constant 1.
Failed writing constant 2.
Failed writing constant 3.
Failed writing constant 1.

If I click next at this point I get this error

Parse error: parse error, unexpected $end in C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\mainfile.php on line 32

At this point I checked out mainfile.dist.php looks like this:

<?php
// $Id: mainfile.dist.php,v 1.7 2004/12/26 19:11:47 Onokazu Exp $
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------ //
// XOOPS - PHP Content Management System //
// Copyright (c) 2000 XOOPS.org //
// <https://xoops.org/> //
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------ //
// This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify //
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by //
// the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or //
// (at your option) any later version. //
// //
// You may not change or alter any portion of this comment or credits //
// of supporting developers from this source code or any supporting //
// source code which is considered copyrighted (c) material of the //
// original comment or credit authors. //
// //
// This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, //
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of //
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the //
// GNU General Public License for more details. //
// //
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License //
// along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software //
// Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA //
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------ //

if ( !defined("XOOPS_MAINFILE_INCLUDED") ) {
define("XOOPS_MAINFILE_INCLUDED",1);

// XOOPS Physical Path
// Physical path to your main XOOPS directory WITHOUT trailing slash
// Example: define('XOOPS_ROOT_PATH', '/path/to/xoops/directory');
define('XOOPS_ROOT_PATH', '');

// XOOPS Virtual Path (URL)
// Virtual path to your main XOOPS directory WITHOUT trailing slash
// Example: define('XOOPS_URL', 'http://url_to_xoops_directory');
define('XOOPS_URL', 'http://');

define('XOOPS_CHECK_PATH', 0);
// Protect against external scripts execution if safe mode is not enabled
if ( XOOPS_CHECK_PATH && !@ini_get('safe_mode') ) {
if ( function_exists('debug_backtrace') ) {
$xoopsScriptPath = debug_backtrace();
if ( !count($xoopsScriptPath) ) {
die("XOOPS path check: this file cannot be requested directly");
}
$xoopsScriptPath = $xoopsScriptPath[0]['file'];
} else {
$xoopsScriptPath = isset($_SERVER['PATH_TRANSLATED']) ? $_SERVER['PATH_TRANSLATED'] : $_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'];
}
if ( DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR != '/' ) {
// IIS6 may double the \ chars
$xoopsScriptPath = str_replace( strpos( $xoopsScriptPath, '\\\\', 2 ) ? '\\\\' : DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, '/', $xoopsScriptPath);
}
if ( strcasecmp( substr($xoopsScriptPath, 0, strlen(XOOPS_ROOT_PATH)), str_replace( DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, '/', XOOPS_ROOT_PATH)) ) {
exit("XOOPS path check: Script is not inside XOOPS_ROOT_PATH and cannot run.");
}
}

// Database
// Choose the database to be used
define('XOOPS_DB_TYPE', 'mysql');

// Table Prefix
// This prefix will be added to all new tables created to avoid name conflict in the database. If you are unsure, just use the default 'xoops'.
define('XOOPS_DB_PREFIX', 'xoops');

// Database Hostname
// Hostname of the database server. If you are unsure, 'localhost' works in most cases.
define('XOOPS_DB_HOST', 'localhost');

// Database Username
// Your database user account on the host
define('XOOPS_DB_USER', '');

// Database Password
// Password for your database user account
define('XOOPS_DB_PASS', '');

// Database Name
// The name of database on the host. The installer will attempt to create the database if not exist
define('XOOPS_DB_NAME', '');

// Use persistent connection? (Yes=1 No=0)
// Default is 'Yes'. Choose 'Yes' if you are unsure.
define('XOOPS_DB_PCONNECT', 0);

define("XOOPS_GROUP_ADMIN", "1");
define("XOOPS_GROUP_USERS", "2");
define("XOOPS_GROUP_ANONYMOUS", "3");

if (!isset($xoopsOption['nocommon']) && XOOPS_ROOT_PATH != '') {
include XOOPS_ROOT_PATH."/include/common.php";
}
}
?>

and my mainfile.php looks like this:

<?php
// $Id: mainfile.dist.php,v 1.7 2004/12/26 19:11:47 Onokazu Exp $
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------ //
// XOOPS - PHP Content Management System //
// Copyright (c) 2000 XOOPS.org //
// <https://xoops.org/> //
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------ //
// This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify //
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by //
// the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or //
// (at your option) any later version. //
// //
// You may not change or alter any portion of this comment or credits //
// of supporting developers from this source code or any supporting //
// source code which is considered copyrighted (c) material of the //
// original comment or credit authors. //
// //
// This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, //
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of //
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the //
// GNU General Public License for more details. //
// //
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License //
// along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software //
// Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA //
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------ //

if ( !defined("XOOPS_MAINFILE_INCLUDED") ) {
define("XOOPS_MAINFILE_INCLUDED",1);

// XOOPS Physical Path
// Physical path to your main XOOPS directory WITHOUT traili



mainfile.php seems to cut off right there in the middle of its sentence. So at this point I tried manually inputing the correct information into the empty set on the repsective define statments of mainfile.dist.php and copying the contents to mainfile.php. Believe it or not this actually worked and returns all green lights.

File ../mainfile.php overwritten by ../mainfile.dist.php.
Constant XOOPS_ROOT_PATH written to C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/htdocs.
Constant XOOPS_URL written tohttp://localhost.
Constant XOOPS_DB_TYPE written to mysql.
Constant XOOPS_DB_PREFIX written to xoops.
Constant XOOPS_DB_HOST written to localhost.
Constant XOOPS_DB_USER written to root.
Constant XOOPS_DB_PASS written to _______.
Constant XOOPS_DB_NAME written to zoodat.
Constant XOOPS_DB_PCONNECT written to 0.
Constant XOOPS_GROUP_ADMIN written to 1.
Constant XOOPS_GROUP_USERS written to 2.
Constant XOOPS_GROUP_ANONYMOUS written to 3.
Constant XOOPS_CHECK_PATH written to 1.

So now the next snag...

Everything checks out up untill confirm databse settings. My settings appear correct however when I click next on this screen I am whisked away to a blankhttp://localhost/install/index.php screen. There is no progress for accessing the database screen and I cecked at the MySQL command promt and nothing is written into the database I created there. This is where I am stuck. Can anyone please help!