Reggie Thomson’s Diary

I have decided not to install and support Joomla.

Some of the reasons are:

1. The current version of Joomla (1.0.12) was based on TABLEs rather than DIVs
2. The Beta version (1.5) did not integrate with SMF forums
3. The administrator panel was complex - possibly too complex for non-IT personnel
4. I will use WordPress as a general CMS instead.

Next stage is to choose a template that is approximately suitable, which will then be adapted for the new website.

None of the above appear to have an integrated smf forum with the identical format.

I’ve uploaded them. Most give errors. This isn’t particularly good software.

I reinstalled Joomla v1.0.9 and smf on my localhost.

To install the bridge (Joomla-smf 1.1.2), you have to first unzip the actual zip file from the downloaded zip.

The “Component -> Joomla-SMF forum -> Installation” gave a problem with “Patch Joomla Source Files”.

This document gave a solution.

I’ve just installed smf (simple machines forum) on my localhost server, but now I can’t access the admin section of Joomla.

I shall delete all the files, remove the database and start from scratch.

On setup of Joomla 1.0.9, there was no error message - I assume the browser check error was corrected.

I cancelled the pop-up message “Confirm password change for…” I assume this is a popup from FireFox for storing the local passwords for auto-fill-in.

Just checking round for a suitable forum to integrate with Joomla.

phpBB can be made to work using a bridge. However, it is one guy’s solution, with no guarantee of future updates.

The Joomla forum uses a SimpleMachines forum, which seems to be the better choice. The code does not use tables (though Joomla is still stuck with this).

Still, it means two separate user bases - until I can find some way of integrating them.

Now I have found a template chooser on joomlahacks.com.

Running a test configuration of Joomla 1.0.8 on Windows/Apache 2.0/PHP 4.3.11 I got:

Fatal error: mosgetbrowser(): Failed opening required ‘includes/agent_browser.php’

This was corrected by modifying a line in “includes/joomla.php” from
3271 require( 'includes/agent_browser.php' );

To:
3271 require( 'agent_browser.php' );

An Error Has Occurred! Unable to open config file to write!

Set file attributes for configuration.php to 666

I started from scratch again with Joomla.

This involved:

1. Remove all tables from MySQL
2. Remove all directories and files from mydomainname.com
3. (Un)Tar the Joomla .tar.gz file
4. Make configuration.php writeable
5. Upload .htaccess as before
6. Make all necessary directories and subdirectories writeable using FileZilla
7. Run through the configuration from www.mydomainname.com
8. Note: the password for Admin was changed, and the email address set to info@mydomainname.com
9. When complete, remove the installation directory and all subfiles, subdirectories as requested
10. Made configuration.php unwriteable
11. Attempted to login with “admin” and “mypassword”

Fails to login!

Go to the website www.mydomainname.com - it’s got the default information on it.
Login as admin - This works!

Click on the “Administrator” button - asks for login again. Fails to login!

Solved problem: Incorrect settings on the sessions directory.

Installation notes:

Using Plesk 8.0.0 (updated from 7.5.4)

1. Used Plesk SSH to upload the Joomla.1.0.8.tar.gz file.

2. Plesk SSH: “tar -zxvf Joomla.1.0.8.tar.gz”

3. Access domain - gives Joomla installation check page.
Problems:

1. configuration.php Unwriteable
Uploaded a blank file and put file permissions to 666

2. Session save path /var/lib/php/session, Unwriteable

a) Tried Putty SSH to server; “su -”; “cd /var/lib/php/”; “ls -al”; “chmod 666 session”;

Fails. Probably because owner is “apache apache”

b) Tried creating “/var/www/vhosts/mydomainname.com/conf/vhost.conf” with contents:

php_value session.save_path “/var/www/vhosts/mydomainname.com/httpdocs/php_sessions”

Fails.

c) Created “.htaccess” file in “httpdocs” with contents:

php_value session.save_path “/var/www/vhosts/mydomainname.com/httpdocs/php_sessions”

Set file permissions of “php_sessions” to 766

See Joomla forums.

Works.

2. Display Errors - Off and Magic Quotes GPC - Off

Added two more lines to .htaccess:

php_value magic_quotes_gpc “1″
php_value display_errors “1″

Works.

3. Safemode off

This was sorted out in Plesk -> mydomainname.com -> setup -> services

4. Directory and file permissions unwriteable

Used Filezilla to change all.

This worked for the top directories, but the sub-directories remained unwriteable if I tried to change the file attributes simultaneously. I haven’t found a solution to this yet.