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World of Warcraft PHPNuke Theme Lich King, World of Warcraft PostNuke Lich King theme
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dougaustin |
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Post subject: Cool Theme Installations for Dummies...
 Posted: Jul 23, 2005 - 07:14 AM
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Joined: Jul 20, 2005
Posts: 9
Location: Centreville, VA
Status: Offline
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[ This taken from my web site, www.dougaustin.com, posted here in thanks to the good folks at portalthemes.com ]
July 22, 2005
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I am not a postnuke expert. I'm good technically, but in other areas.
If you're a game player, or a business owner, and you've wound up here because you've found a great looking PostNuke Theme, then you are in the same boat I was in a week ago.
Read this and save yourself a few days:
1. Pick a theme that includes PHphpBB2 styles if you want to use message boards. I did for my World of Warcraft Guild site.
2. Go to your ISP and get a DNS name setup if you don't have one - this can take a few days to "go live." If you have one, setup a new host record. Point it to something like "www" in your domain. Or if you already have a www, setup www2 while you are getting this to work.
3. Get your software together. These instructions were created on a debian linux system; I ran these commands about a week ago:
apt-get remove postnuke (I had played with it months ago).
Woops, this uninstalled MySQL-server package.
And so I did a:
apt-get install mysql-server
apt-get install mysql-client.
And I downloaded the following packages:
PostNuke-0.750b from postnuke.org
AutoTheme-0.8 lite from http://spidean.mckenzies.net/
PNphpBB from pnphpbb.com
Make a donation and wait for your link from the Site Admins here. Download your theme when you get a URL for it.
Organize these neatly and save off a copy of each, you may mess up and need to go back for files again.
4. You'll need to be able use some basic unix commands. Know how to:
- download files from their respective web sites.
- ftp from your workstation to your linux server.
-or-
- Use your server's X windows console and download these packages to your computer.
-Install gunzip if you don't have it and are downloading ZIPs and not TAR files.
- You must know how to uncompress (gunzip) and explore a tar file (tar -xvf <filename). There, now you know.
- You need to be reasonably proficient with Unix CD, CP, MV, CHOWN, CHGRP, and CHMOD commands. If you're not. stop now. Login to a unix prompt and type "man <command>" to read up on the manual pages.
And I suppose if you're really new to all this, you'll likely need a copy of a Secure Shell program so you can login to your server. Look for putty, it's great for this sort of work and last I checked, the price was very right.
5. Login on your linux server. FTP over, uncompress, and un-tar the PostNuke binary. Copy the files to your web server root folder. Install PostNuke 0.750b (as of July 2005) by browsing via http to the web server root/install.php file.
Take a time-out and use your MYSQL server to create a blank database and a user. If you really want the easy way out, but a slight diversion, go to http://www.webmin.org, and download and install the latest WebMin console - it makes a lot of Linux tasks easy. If you are using Webmin, go to servers, MySql. Create a User. Give the user all permissions. Set the user to only be able to use the host "localhost". Set a password up for the user account. Create a database. Write all these settings down.
Back to your PostNuke installation. Give your install.php browser session the account name you just created in MySQL administration, your database name, and the password you created for the user.
CREATE a PostNuke administrator ID. Write down the Admin's name and password.
6. To make PostNuke work, and to keep your site safe, you must remove (rm command) install.php and the install folder (rm -r install). Please be really really really careful using rm -r if you are a new unix admin! You must be in the appropriate directory EVERY time you use this command. Get GREAT with the CD command and know how to change working directories before you ever think of running recursive RM commands!
7. With install.php and the ./install/ folder deleted, now you can log in to your site via web browser. Right off the bat, go to Administration, User Administration, and create a test account. USE this account when you are making changes in the admin panel. Make a change to STYLES and TEMPLATES only when logged in as your test account. INSTALL these things using the admin account you create when you install PostNuke... but TEST new settings or you will have to figure out how to clean up an admin account that cannot login because you have a style that's not working. Broken style means you cannot access the Admin screen to turn off what's broken*. Woops!
Log in and out. Be sure you have a test account and an admin account that work properly.
*(If you do get in this bind, remember the name of the style you were trying to make work, and Copy the ExtraLight folder contents to the style folder. This can help you recover... but it can also lead to problems)
8. Setup your site customizations using the Administration menu. (set up site name, etc.)
9. Install AutoTheme Lite (or the pro version if you want support). Copying the files over, unpacking, un-tarring, etc. creates a new folder under the /modules folder.
10. Set permissions, owner and group on your new files EVERY time you copy something to the server. Many files need to be written to durin ghte course of normal operations. Intermediate users - will know what to do.
Newbies, If you don't know what this step means, you might be over your head. Seek professional help, stop, learn what modes, owners and groups are. Read your Web server documentation. Understand what user the http daemon is running as. I'll tell you here that if you run these commands at the top of your site folder, you're making it work, and you're being lazy... and you just may have your site and server compromised.
chmod -R 777 *
chown -R root *
chgroup -R root *
The above commands are the easy way out. Think twice, if what you're doing is important enough to warrant a Content Manager, do you *really* need to open the permissions up completely on the site and risk threats, vulnerabilities, outages and even data loss? Be careful setting permissions.
Read the docs that come with these software packages. set more open permissions (774) on the "moving parts" so your web service can read AND write to files that need to be written. Apply write permissions where you must, and group/world read everywhere else (644) or (744) are better options that chmod 777 commands!
11. For me, AutoTheme didn't show up on my Administration panel at first. Go to the Modules icon. Regenerate the list if necessary. Scroll down to AutoTheme, initialize and activate the module.
Be sure you can enter the AutoTheme administration module. If the icon is not showing up, try crafting a URL to your web server that looks somethings like this:
http://<your_server_name_here/admin.php?module=AutoTheme&op=main
In my case, this works, and afterwards, the AutoTheme icon appears on the Administration console. It's as if it needs a kick on the head (or I've missed something!)
12. Install the PostNuke version of phpBB - PNphpBB2. Download, unzip, FTP, create a folder precisely named ./modules/PNphpBB2/, explode, untar, "mv" files etc. This creates another MODULE. before trying to use it, read up on and then set appropriate permissions, owner and group settings (chmod, chown, chgrp). These will look similar to the ones you set for AutoTheme.
13. Using the Administration screen, and the Modules icon, initialize and activate the PNphpBB2 module.
14. Using the Administration screen, Click the pnPHPbb icon. Setup your message board. Use the Forum menu item to create a forum or a group of forums. Review your attachment sizes and limits, the defaults can probably be increased a little, but your mileage may vary. Under General Admin, review the settings and make only the necessary adjustments for now, such as your Admin e-mail address and perhaps include your web site URL in the Email signature. If your users like to use the signature block, give them a little more space for signature length. Submit any changes you make. Finally, at the bottom of the PNphpBB2 admin menu, select under PNphpBB2, the Configuration item. Turn on Theme matching. You may want to turn off the PHPBB2 Logo, this is a cosmetic choice, you're the only person who will notice this. Set a "Link to return users back to your PostNuke site" and the text that goes with the link. Submit any changes you make.
Use the "Preview Forum" selection to ensure your forums are working.
15. Browse back to your main site URL. Using the Administration screen, and the Blocks icon, create a new block. Name it "Message Board" or "Forums" - whatever you like, and specify the type - it will be near or at the bottom of the drop-down list, the "PNphpBB2/Multiblock". Later on, you may turn this block off. For now, setup a block, see that you can use the main PostNuke menu items, get into your forums, and browse back.
16. Install the fancy Theme that possibly started this entire process! Autothemes and PNphpBB should already be in place and working before you do so.
Download your Theme. Unzip it on your local workstation.
Look carefully for another ZIP file in the contentsyou just unzipped. This will be your pnPHPbb Theme. Unzip it into a separate folder.
Study the layouts of these two folders, When you are sure you understand how the two meet (they should likely be unzipped into the SAME target folder), merge the two zips together. You received them in separate parts, because not everyone wants the PHPBB message board installed. Assuming you do, merge the two files. FTP them to the server, MV or CP the files into the root of your site and let the file structure of the ZIP distribute the files out to the ./modules, the ./PNphpBBs/ and other parts of the site file system hierarchy.
Once again, set ownership, modes and groups for the ENTIRE site. Ownership and permissions settings on a folder, at this point, can prevent a module or style from initializing properly. Don't try to USE any new modules or items in your web browser until you have setup the files, their permissions, owners and groups to work properly with your web server!
The magic trick I had to learn about the the PortalTheme Theme that I obtained was this: The cool, new looking style actually replaces the default style for the PNphpBB module. Don't try to install it in a separate style folder like I did. Things get uh-huh-gly.
17. Login to your site as your test user. Access the User information page. Select a new style. You should see the name of your new style on the drop-down list. Use it!
18. If everything works properly, you can use the Admin login and set the default style for your site to the new Theme. Click On Administration, Settings, and make sure you setup a Site Name, a slogan if you like, meta keywords that will help search engines find your site, your time Zone, and of course, the Default Theme for the Content Management System.
Be sure you click "Save changes" - it's several screens down, and is at the bottom of the Settings page.
19. Now you can fine-tune your site. I right-clicked on the logo for my site, and found out the graphics at the top are actually several blocks. Note the file name for the area you want to put your name in. Using Photoshop or Firefox, browse the folders for your custom theme. You can use Photoshop or Firefox to drop in your Site name, export the graphic as a JPG or GIF, ftp the file to your web server, make a backup copy just in case, then copy over the new graphic from your FTP file location.
20. BACKUP YOUR WEB SITE.
From the login screen. CD to your web server home folder. Then do "cd ..". Run the command tar -cvvf /backup_filename ./site_root_folder_foldername. You will substitute in a backup file name and the right root folder name.
Log in to webmin (http://servername:10000). Under Servers, MySQL, use the Backup Database wizard to setup a daily backup job. Make a copy of your /etc/apache/httpd.conf file, and you'll have everything backed up - database, a tar file of your site configuration, and the the web server's configuration file. Congratulations, you've done it! |
Last edited by dougaustin on Jul 25, 2005 - 06:06 PM; edited 1 time in total
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mars |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 23, 2005 - 02:16 PM
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Site Admin
Joined: Aug 15, 2004
Posts: 4006
Status: Offline
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sappyse107 |
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Post subject:
Posted: Oct 19, 2005 - 05:15 AM
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Joined: Oct 19, 2005
Posts: 1
Status: Offline
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"1. Pick a theme that includes PHphpBB2 styles if you want to use message boards. I did for my World of Warcraft Guild site. "
Wonderful. How do I do that cause i just got one that doesnt even show the pnphpbb block anymore. I see no mention of pnphpbb in any of the themes. |
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mars |
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Post subject:
Posted: Oct 19, 2005 - 11:26 AM
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Site Admin
Joined: Aug 15, 2004
Posts: 4006
Status: Offline
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If you have one of my themes for Postnuke then inside the theme zip is another zipped named pnphpbb.zip
That contains the forum theme. |
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dbadolato |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 21, 2006 - 09:36 PM
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Joined: Jun 20, 2006
Posts: 4
Status: Offline
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Ok, I'm still confused.
Above you said
Quote:
Study the layouts of these two folders, When you are sure you understand how the two meet (they should likely be unzipped into the SAME target folder), merge the two zips together. You received them in separate parts, because not everyone wants the PHPBB message board installed. Assuming you do, merge the two files. FTP them to the server, MV or CP the files into the root of your site and let the file structure of the ZIP distribute the files out to the ./modules, the ./PNphpBBs/ and other parts of the site file system hierarchy.
I downloaded a "donation -based" theme here. When I unzip the file I get:
wowaliance2 (folder) and pnphpbb2.zip
I think I understand where to put the contents of the unzipped phpbb2.zip but I do not know where to put the wowaliance2 folder. Does it go in the CMSroot/modules? |
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mars |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 21, 2006 - 10:11 PM
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Site Admin
Joined: Aug 15, 2004
Posts: 4006
Status: Offline
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Once you get the AutoTheme module installed then you go to the theme install.
Unzip the theme zip file, then upload wowalliance2 folder to CMSRoot/Themes/
Then unzip the pnphpbb2.zip and upload those files to the matching folders under CMSRoot/modules/PNphpBB2/ |
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