Orbis CMS Developer Documentation

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2. Installation

2.1 Before you install

The first aspect to consider before you download and install Orbis CMS is whether it will work in the environment you plan to install it. Although Orbis CMS has a very low resource footprint, the technologies (PHP and MySQL) required by it have to be up to date in your environment. It is recommended that you have at least PHP 5 and MySQL 5 installed. Most modern web hosts should have these versions installed by default. If you're unsure, contact your host for information.

A second aspect to consider is how and where you're going to integrate Orbis into your environment, specifically with regards to the directory structure. It is recommended that you extract the Orbis CMS release package (orbis-1.0.0.zip) into the same directory as your website. You should also note that the orbis.php file (located in the root of the release package) should be in a directory accessible to the rest of your website's pages, as it needs to be included in each page you wish to have editable content. Details on including this file will be discussed in the 'Integration' section of this documentation.

2.2 The step-by-step installer

After you've uploaded and extracted the Orbis CMS release package to your web server (using the guidelines in 2.1 Before you install), you can start the step-by-step installation guide included with the release package. This can be done by opening the install directory (in the root directory of the extracted contents) in your web browser. The installation guide will check the perquisites for Orbis CMS, help you set up a database for data storage and allow you to configure the CMS for your website. Please note that, for security reasons, you should delete the install directory as soon as the installation is finished.

2.3 Troubleshooting

If you encounter a problem while using the installation guide, please report it in the support forum ASAP. If you think that you've encountered a bug, please open a new bug report in the tracking console. You will have to install Orbis CMS manually. Follow these steps to accomplish this:

1. Make sure that all the config files (located in admin/includes/config/) are writable (CHMOD 777).
2. Download and import this database dump into a new database on your server.
3. Open db.php (located in admin/includes/config/) with a text editor and enter the database details for the database you created in the previous step. If you are unsure about any of the variable values, contact your host for information.
4. Open site.php (located in admin/includes/config/) with a text editor and enter (1) your site's name and (2) address as values for the variables.
5. Open uploads.php (located in admin/includes/config/) with a text editor and enter (1) the public address (e.g. http://www.novo-ws.com/uploads/) and (2) path (e.g. /public_html/uploads/) of the directory where you want to store uploads. It is recommended that you use and keep the default directory structure, i.e that the uploads directory is used for uploads and stays in the same directory as admin.
6. Create an administrator account for yourself. Open your database browser (e.g. phpMyAdmin) and insert a new row (user) into the 'security' table. Enter appropriate values for each of the fields and make sure you enter '2' as value for the 'type' field.
7. Delete the install directory. Open the admin directory in your browser and log in with the details you inserted into the database in the previous step. You can now start using Orbis CMS.