Newsagent/Installing

Newsagent
Author	Chris Page
Contact	Support
Repository	github
Issue tracker	github
OS	Neutral (web based) Will not work with IE8 or older
URL	Newsagent
Navigation
General Overview Feed List Feed Subscription Logging in Logout Articles Composing Articles (Quickstart) Image Library Files Notification Method Options Feeds and Visibility Multiple Feeds Listing Articles Editing Articles Template Articles Syndication Newsletters Newsletters Newsletter Editor Tell Us Tell Us Queues Tech docs Advanced/Upcoming features Installation Technical Autogenerated docs

Installing

Step 1: Environment

Before attempting to install Newsagent, ensure that your server meets the requirements listed under Environment requirements and that all the Perl modules listed under Perl modules required are installed.

Step 2: CKEditor

Next download the "Full Package" version of the latest release of CKEditor from the CKEditor site. For example:

cd /var/www/localhost
wget 'http://download.cksource.com/CKEditor/CKEditor/CKEditor%204.4.6/ckeditor_4.4.6_full.zip'
unzip ckeditor_4.4.6_full.zip

This will create a ckeditor directory in /var/www/localhost. Be sure to get the latest CKEditor package, rather than just reusing the URL above!

Step 3: Software and dependencies

Once the software environment is prepared, you need to clone all the required repositories and set up links. With the exception of the first two lines of the instructions, the paths used are not important and are given for example only. However, if you use different paths, remember to adjust the instructions accordingly:

cd /var/www
git clone https://github.com/TheWatcher/webperl.git
mkdir /var/www/localhost/newsagent
cd /var/www/localhost/newsagent
git clone https://github.com/UoMCS/newsagent.git
git clone https://github.com/TheWatcher/MultiSelect.git
git clone https://github.com/TheWatcher/mootools-datepicker.git
git clone https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text.git
cd /var/www/localhost/newsagent/templates/default/js
ln -s ../../../../MultiSelect .
ln -s ../../../../ckeditor .
ln -s ../../../../mootools-datepicker/Source datepicker
ln -s ../../../../twitter-text/js/twitter-text.js .

Step 4: Database and configuration

Now you need to create a MySQL user, an empty database, and grant all privileges on that database to the new user. Once these have been created you can initialise the database using the basic_db.sql file provided in the source. The following assumes that the new user and database are both called 'newsagent':

cd /var/www/localhost/newsagent/config
mysql -u newsagent -p newsagent < basic_db.sql

If the database is on a remote system, be sure to specify the -h and possibly -p options as appropriate (I would advise against using a remote database, unless you can guarantee a reliable and very fast connection to it).

Once the database has been set up you will need to create a new config/site.cfg file containing the information Newsagent needs to communicate with the database:

cd /var/www/localhost/newsagent/config
cp site.cfg.dist site.cfg
nano -w site.cfg

You will minimally need to edit the database, username, and password variables on lines 3-5. Note that, to operate correctly, Newsagent currently requires a connection to a 'user data' database to support notification handling; please ask if you need information about this.

The database is created with a number of default settings that you will need to change: inspect the contents of the settings table and ensure the values are set appropriately. Important settings you will need to change are:

Name	Default	Description
base	/var/www/localhost/newsagent	The filessytem path to the newsagent directory. Must be an absolute path.
scriptpath'	/newsagent	The web path to the newsagent system, relative to the host. If newsagent is at the root of the site set this to /, otherwise give the web path to the directory containing newsagent here.
logfile		If set, log messages are written to this file. Ensure it is outside the web tree, but is writable by the webserver user.
Core:envelope_address	your@email.address	The email address to use as the envelope sender on 'housekeeping' emails sent by Newsagent. This is not used for notification emails (the article author's email is used for those).
Core:admin_email	your@email.address	The email address to show in the From: of housekeeping emails.
Article:upload_image_path	/var/www/path/to/newsagent/images	The filesystem location that uploaded images should be saved to. Must be writeable by the webserver user, and currently must be web accessible.
Article:upload_image_url	https://server.url/newsagent/images	The URL of the image upload path.
RSS:editor	your@email.addy (Your Email)	The email address to show in the <managingEditor> element of published RSS feeds.
RSS:webmaster	your@email.addy (Your Email)	The email address to show in the <webMaster> element of published RSS feeds.
RSS:title	Feed Title	The text to show in the <title> element of published RSS feeds.
RSS:description	The latest news and events	The text to show in the <description> element of published RSS feeds.
Article:logo_img_url	https://server.url/.../uom_logo.png	Location of the default logo to include in emails; this should be a 154x63 image, preferably served over https.
httphost	https://server.url/	The URL of the root of the server Newsagent is being served from.

Step 5: Webserver

    Alias /newsagent "/var/www/localhost/newsagent/newsagent"
    <Directory "/var/www/localhost/newsagent/newsagent">
        AllowOverride All
        Options +FollowSymlinks -Indexes +ExecCGI
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>

    <Location /newsagent/*.cgi>
        SetHandler perl-script
        PerlResponseHandler ModPerl::Registry
        PerlOptions +ParseHeaders
    </Location>

Requirements

Where specified, version numbers are the minimum versions of packages that Newsagent has been tested with. Later versions should work provided no breaking changes have been made.

Environment requirements

• Linux. Windows may work, but has not been tested.
• MySQL 5.6. Some features are MySQL specific at this time.
• Apache 2. mod_perl is optional but very strongly recommended. Other web servers may work, but have not been tested.
• Perl 5.16 (note: most of Newsagent testing has been on Perl 5.18 and 5.20)
• ImageMagick 6.9
• TidyP (see [1])

Git projects required

• https://github.com/UoMCS/newsagent.git
• https://github.com/TheWatcher/webperl.git
• https://github.com/TheWatcher/MultiSelect.git
• https://github.com/TheWatcher/mootools-datepicker.git
• https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text.git

Perl modules required

The following required modules are often found in Linux distro repositories and should be installed from there:

• CGI (including CGI::Utils)
• Class::Accessor
• Class::Mix
• Compress::Bzip2
• Crypt::Random
• Date-Calc
• Datetime
• DBI
• Devel::StackTrace
• Email::MIME
• Email::Sender::Simple (in Email-Sender)
• Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP (in Email-Sender)
• Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP::Persistent (in Email-Sender)
• Email::Valid
• Expect (Only required if the Webperl::AuthMethod::SSH auth method is used)
• File::Type
• HTML::Entities (in HTML::Parser)
• HTML::Scrubber
• HTML::TokeParser::Simple
• JSON
• Net::LDAPS (perl-ldap) (Only required if the Webperl::AuthMethod::LDAP OR LDAPS auth methods are used)
• Params::Classify
• Proc::Daemon
• Regexp::Common
• Try::Tiny (installed with Email-Sender)
• WWW::Mechanize
• XML::Simple

The following are usually not in repositories and will need to be installed via CPAN if not in your distro's repository:

• CSS::Inliner
• Crypt::Eksblowfish::Bcrypt (Only required if the Webperl::AuthMethod::Database auth method is used)
• CGI::Compress::Gzip
• experimental
• DateTime::Event::Cron
• Email::MIME::CreateHTML
• HTML::FormatText
• HTML::Tidy (Requires tidyp from http://tidyp.com/ )
• Net::Twitter::Lite (Must be v0.12006 or later)
• HTML::WikiConverter::Markdown
• WebService::Validator::HTML::W3C
• Net::SSH::Expect (Only required if the Webperl::AuthMethod::SSH auth method is used)

• Lingua::EN::Sentence