README

SuiteDesk is my own web based app for planning, knowledge sharing, clients support, collaboration and personal productivity, with both powerful and simplicity in mind. Contents of this file:

• Requirements
• Installation
• Drupal administration
• Customizing your theme(s)
• Multisite Configuration
• More Information
• Copyright notices

REQUIREMENTS

SuiteDesk began long time ago as a Drupal 6 project, and now continues as a standalone software product. It requires:

• A web server (Apache web server with mode_rewrite module and the ability to use local .htaccess files is recommended),
• PHP 5 (better with version 5.4.45), and
• MySQL (4.1.1 or greater).

See http://www.php.net and http://www.mysql.com for more information.

INSTALLATION

1. DOWNLOAD SUITEDESK

You can obtain the latest SuiteDesk release from:

https://gitlab.cillero.es/manuelcillero/suitedesk ( = REPOSITORY )

If you select files in .tar.gz or .zip format, they can be extracted using most compression tools. Example, on a typical Unix command line, use:

wget REPOSITORY/archive.tar.gz?ref=master
tar -zxvf archive.tar.gz

This will create a new directory suitedesk/ containing all SuiteDesk files and directories. Move the contents of that directory into a directory within your web server's document root or your public HTML directory:

mv suitedesk/* suitedesk/.htaccess /var/www/html

2. CREATE THE CONFIGURATION FILE AND GRANT WRITE PERMISSIONS

SuiteDesk comes with a default.settings.php file in the config/default directory. Use this file as a template to create your settings file. To avoid problems when upgrading, SuiteDesk is not packaged with an actual settings file. You must create a file named settings.php. You may do so by making a copy of default.settings.php (or create an empty file with this name in the same directory). For example, (from the installation directory) make a copy of the default.settings.php file with the command:

cp config/default/default.settings.php config/default/settings.php

Next, give the web server write privileges to the config/default/settings.php file with the command (from the installation directory):

chmod o+w config/default/settings.php

So that the files directory can be created automatically, give the web server write privileges to the config/default directory with the command (from the installation directory):

chmod o+w config/default

3. CREATE THE SUITEDESK DATABASE

SuiteDesk requires access to a database in order to be installed. Your database user will need sufficient privileges to run SuiteDesk.

To create a database using PHPMyAdmin or a web-based control panel consult the documentation or ask your webhost service provider.

Take note of the username, password, database name and hostname as you create the database. You will enter these items in the install script.

This step is only necessary if you don't already have a database set-up (e.g. by your host). In the following examples, 'username' is an example MySQL user which has the CREATE and GRANT privileges. Use the appropriate user name for your system.

First, you must create a new database for your Drupal site (here, 'databasename' is the name of the new database):

 mysqladmin -u username -p create databasename

MySQL will prompt for the 'username' database password and then create the initial database files. Next you must login and set the access database rights:

 mysql -u username -p

Again, you will be asked for the 'username' database password. At the MySQL prompt, enter following command:

 GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER,
 CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ON databasename.*
 TO 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

where

'databasename' is the name of your database
'username@localhost' is the username of your MySQL account
'password' is the password required for that username

Note: Unless your database user has all of the privileges listed above, you will not be able to run Drupal.

If successful, MySQL will reply with:

 Query OK, 0 rows affected

4. RUN THE INSTALL SCRIPT

To run the install script point your browser to the base URL of your website (e.g., http://www.example.com).

You will be guided through several screens to set up the database, create tables, add the first user account and provide basic web site settings.

The install script will attempt to create a files storage directory in the default location at config/default/files (the location of the files directory may be changed after Drupal is installed). In some cases, you may need to create the directory and modify its permissions manually. Use the following commands (from the installation directory) to create the files directory and grant the web server write privileges to it:

 mkdir config/default/files
 chmod o+w config/default/files

The install script will attempt to write-protect the settings.php file and the config/default directory after saving your configuration. However, you may need to manually write-protect them using the commands (from the installation directory):

 chmod a-w config/default/settings.php
 chmod a-w config/default

If you make manual changes to the file later, be sure to protect it again after making your modifications. Failure to remove write permissions to that file is a security risk. Although the default location for the settings.php file is at config/default/settings.php, it may be in another location if you use the multi-site setup, as explained below.

5. CONFIGURE SUITEDESK

When the install script succeeds, you will be directed to the "Welcome" page, and you will be logged in as the administrator already. Proceed with the initial configuration steps suggested on the "Welcome" page.

If the default Drupal theme is not displaying properly and links on the page result in "Page Not Found" errors, try manually setting the $base_url variable in the settings.php file if not already set. It's currently known that servers running FastCGI can run into problems if the $base_url variable is left commented out (see http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=19656).

6. REVIEW FILE SYSTEM STORAGE SETTINGS AND FILE PERMISSIONS

The files directory created in step 4 is the default file system path used to store all uploaded files, as well as some temporary files created by Drupal. After installation, the settings for the file system path may be modified to store uploaded files in a different location.

It is not necessary to modify this path, but you may wish to change it if:

 * your site runs multiple Drupal installations from a single codebase
   (modify the file system path of each installation to a different
   directory so that uploads do not overlap between installations); or,

 * your site runs a number of web server front-ends behind a load
   balancer or reverse proxy (modify the file system path on each
   server to point to a shared file repository).

To modify the file system path:

 * Ensure that the new location for the path exists or create it if
   necessary. To create a new directory named uploads, for example,
   use the following command from a shell or system prompt (while in
   the installation directory):

       mkdir uploads

 * Ensure that the new location for the path is writable by the web
   server process. To grant write permissions for a directory named
   uploads, you may need to use the following command from a shell
   or system prompt (while in the installation directory):

       chmod o+w uploads

 * Access the file system path settings in Drupal by selecting these
   menu items from the Navigation menu:

       Administer > Site configuration > File system

   Enter the path to the new location (e.g.: uploads) at the File
   System Path prompt.

Changing the file system path after files have been uploaded may cause unexpected problems on an existing site. If you modify the file system path on an existing site, remember to copy all files from the original location to the new location.

Some administrators suggest making the documentation files, especially CHANGELOG.txt, non-readable so that the exact version of Drupal you are running is slightly more difficult to determine. If you wish to implement this optional security measure, use the following command from a shell or system prompt (while in the installation directory):

      chmod a-r CHANGELOG.txt

Note that the example only affects CHANGELOG.txt. To completely hide all documentation files from public view, repeat this command for each of the Drupal documentation files in the installation directory, substituting the name of each file for CHANGELOG.txt in the example.

For more information on setting file permissions, see "Modifying Linux, Unix, and Mac file permissions" (http://drupal.org/node/202483) or "Modifying Windows file permissions" (http://drupal.org/node/202491) in the online handbook.

7. CRON MAINTENANCE TASKS

Many Drupal modules have periodic tasks that must be triggered by a cron maintenance task, including search module (to build and update the index used for keyword searching), aggregator module (to retrieve feeds from other sites), ping module (to notify other sites about new or updated content), and system module (to perform routine maintenance and pruning on system tables). To activate these tasks, call the cron page by visiting http://www.example.com/cron.php, which, in turn, executes tasks on behalf of installed modules.

Most systems support the crontab utility for scheduling tasks like this. The following example crontab line will activate the cron tasks automatically on the hour:

0 * * * * wget -O - -q -t 1 http://www.example.com/cron.php

More information about cron maintenance tasks are available in the help pages and in Drupal's online handbook at http://drupal.org/cron. Example scripts can be found in the scripts/ directory.

DRUPAL ADMINISTRATION

A new installation of Drupal defaults to a very basic configuration with only a few active modules and minimal user access rights.

Use your administration panel to enable and configure services. For example:

General Settings Administer > Site configuration > Site information Enable Modules Administer > Site building > Modules Configure Themes Administer > Site building > Themes Set User Permissions Administer > User management > Permissions

For more information on configuration options, read the instructions which accompany the different configuration settings and consult the various help pages available in the administration panel.

Community-contributed modules and themes are available at http://drupal.org/.

CUSTOMIZING YOUR THEME(S)

Now that your installation is running, you will want to customize the look of your site. Several sample themes are included and more can be downloaded from drupal.org.

Simple customization of your theme can be done using only CSS. Further changes require understanding the phptemplate engine that is part of Drupal. See http://drupal.org/handbook/customization to find out more.

MULTISITE CONFIGURATION

A single Drupal installation can host several Drupal-powered sites, each with its own individual configuration.

Additional site configurations are created in subdirectories within the 'config' directory. Each subdirectory must have a 'settings.php' file which specifies the configuration settings. The easiest way to create additional sites is to copy the 'default' directory and modify the 'settings.php' file as appropriate. The new directory name is constructed from the site's URL. The configuration for www.example.com could be in 'config/example.com/settings.php' (note that 'www.' should be omitted if users can access your site at http://example.com/).

Sites do not have to have a different domain. You can also use subdomains and subdirectories for Drupal sites. For example, example.com, sub.example.com, and sub.example.com/site3 can all be defined as independent Drupal sites. The setup for a configuration such as this would look like the following:

config/default/settings.php config/example.com/settings.php config/sub.example.com/settings.php config/sub.example.com.site3/settings.php

When searching for a site configuration (for example www.sub.example.com/site3), Drupal will search for configuration files in the following order, using the first configuration it finds:

config/www.sub.example.com.site3/settings.php config/sub.example.com.site3/settings.php config/example.com.site3/settings.php config/www.sub.example.com/settings.php config/sub.example.com/settings.php config/example.com/settings.php config/default/settings.php

If you are installing on a non-standard port, the port number is treated as the deepest subdomain. For example: http://www.example.com:8080/ could be loaded from config/8080.www.example.com/. The port number will be removed according to the pattern above if no port-specific configuration is found, just like a real subdomain.

Each site configuration can have its own site-specific modules and themes in addition to those installed in the standard 'modules' and 'themes' directories. To use site-specific modules or themes, simply create a 'modules' or 'themes' directory within the site configuration directory. For example, if sub.example.com has a custom theme and a custom module that should not be accessible to other sites, the setup would look like this:

config/sub.example.com/: settings.php themes/custom_theme modules/custom_module

NOTE: for more information about multiple virtual hosts or the configuration settings, consult the Drupal handbook at drupal.org.

For more information on configuring Drupal's file system path in a multi-site configuration, see step 6 above.

MORE INFORMATION

• For additional documentation, see the online Drupal handbook at http://drupal.org/handbook.

• For a list of security announcements, see the "Security announcements" page at http://drupal.org/security (available as an RSS feed). This page also describes how to subscribe to these announcements via e-mail.

• For information about the Drupal security process, or to find out how to report a potential security issue to the Drupal security team, see the "Security team" page at http://drupal.org/security-team.

• For information about the wide range of available support options, see the "Support" page at http://drupal.org/support.