===================================================================== ViPER Guestbook readme.txt ===================================================================== Content: ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) System requirements 2) Installation (a) Quick installation (b) Detailed installation & troubleshooting (c) Skin installation (d) Language pack installation (e) Reinstallation (f) Deinstallation 3) Integration 4) Script parameters 5) Contact 6) Special Thanks ===================================================================== 1) System requirements ===================================================================== The ViPER Guestbook needs a minimum of 550KB free webspace, a webserver with PHP4 or PHP5 support and access to a MySQL database. ===================================================================== 2) Installation ===================================================================== a) Quick installation -------------------------------------------------------------- 1. upload the gb directory 2. open install.php 3. start installation 4. open admin.php 5. set character encoding 6. integration into your website - see 3) b) Detailed installation & troubleshooting -------------------------------------------------------------- On most servers .php is the default extension for PHP files, but it's possible that your hoster uses another extension (e.g. .php4 or .php5) - please ask your server administrator. If .php is not allowed you must rename the extension of the following files: install.php index.php admin.php screen.php ht_badwords.php BUT don't change the extension of functions.php ! 1. Upload the the complete vipergb directory with a FTP client to a target directory on your webserver. This directory will be your guestbook directory E.g. if you upload index.php to http://www.xy.com/gb/index.php then your guestbook directory is www.xy.com/gb/ Use the AUTO mode for the file upload if available otherwise you must use the BINARY mode for all image files and the ASCII mode for the .html, .php, .css, .map and .inc files. 2. Ensure that the files and the directories have the right permissions: Guestbook dir 777 index.php 755 admin.php 755 install.php 755 functions.php 755 screen.php 755 banned.php 755 ht_badwords.php 777 admin dir 755 detection dir 755 libs dir 755 lang dir 755 images dir 755 skins dir 755 flags dir 755 emoticons dir 755 logs dir 777 backups dir 777 upload dir 777 upload/preview dir 777 3. Start the installation by opening install.php in your guestbook directory. If you can't see a installation form, but a - Internal Server Error (500) - weird text messages starting with General Setup->Encoding). The ViPER Guestbook supports all single byte encodings which are supersets of ASCII and the utf-8 (Unicode) multibyte encoding. On most servers iso-8859-1 is the default encoding. Here are possible encodings you can enter: utf-8 = All languages (Unicode) us-ascii = American (not recommended) iso-8859-1 = Western European (Latin 1) iso-8859-2 = Central European (Latin 2) iso-8859-3 = South European (Latin 3) iso-8859-4 = North European (Latin 4) iso-8859-5 = Cyrillic iso-8859-6 = Arabic iso-8859-7 = Greek iso-8859-8 = Hebrew iso-8859-9 = Turkish (Latin 5) iso-8859-10 = Nordic (Latin 6) iso-8859-11 = Thai iso-8859-13 = Baltic Rim (Latin 7) iso-8859-14 = Celtic (Latin 8) iso-8859-16 = South-Eastern European (Latin 10) koi8-r = Russian Cyrillic koi8-u = Ukrainian Cyrillic If you don't find an encoding for your language you should use utf-8, especially for Korean, Chinese and Japanese or if you want to have a multilingual guestbook. But please note that utf-8 needs more database space than a single byte encoding! 6. Test your guestbook by opening index.php in your guestbook directory. If the guestbook is too slow or if you get a "Page cannot be displayed" error you can try to deactivate the hostname resolving: Go to admin.php and click on "Setup"->"Hostname Resolving" 7. The installation is complete you can add a guestbook link (referencing index.php in your guestbook directory) to the main menu of your website. Read 3) or the "Guestbook inclusion for Dummies" how-to on the ViPER Guestbook website if you want to know more about the integration of the guestbook into your website design. c) Skin installation -------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Use a FTP client to copy the skin directory you have downloaded into the skins folder of the guestbook. 2. Open the administration and select the new skin directory in the 'Use skin' drop-down-box under the setup page. If click on 'Save setup' the new skin is activated. 3. You can delete the directory of the old skin now if you want to save webspace. d) Language pack installation -------------------------------------------------------------- + Installation as new default language for the guestbook: You simply have to use your FTP client to overwrite the folder 'lang' in the guestbook directory with the folder you have downloaded. + Installation as additional guestbook language: Rename the 'lang' folder you have download and move the the directory into the 'lang' folder of your guestbook. In addition to the language pack you must install lang.inc of the same language otherwise the guestbook is not entirely translated. Download the lang.inc for your skin in the same language as the new language pack. Create a new subdir in the folder of your active skin and move the lang.inc into this folder. Afterwards create a new guestbook language by selecting the new folder and lang.inc under: admin.php->"Setup"->"New language"->"Language"+"Skin" e) Reinstallation -------------------------------------------------------------- ! Caution: By the reinstallation all saved datas of the guestbook get lost ! 1. Delete the file ht_lock.php in your guestbook directory. 2. Start the installation by opening install.php in your browser. f) Deinstallation -------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Download the deinstallation script 2. Copy the script into your guestbook directory. 3. Start the script by opening deinstall.php in your browser. 4. Delete the guestbook directory from your webserver. ===================================================================== 3) Integration ===================================================================== Beside the referencing of the script via a Frame, IFrame or a extra page there is the possibility to integrate the guestbook into an existing site design. There 2 possible ways to do this: a) Integration via noFrames.php --------------------------------------------------------------- For this possibility the skin file noFrames.php, which is responsible for the frameless representation of the guestbook, must be extended by the basic structure of the website. Enclose everything in this file that stands between the and -Tag by a table cell:
...content of the body element...
Afterwards add the basic structure around this table, so that the guestbook is located where you want it to appear. But you must take care that all stylesheets and included files are still integrated properly, otherwise the representation of the guestbook will be wrong. All used Links and image references, which were added to noFrames.php, must either be absolute or relative to the guestbook directory. b) Integration via PHP include() statement --------------------------------------------------------------- Beginners should read the "Guestbook inclusion for Dummies" how-to on www.vipergb.de.vu Here is a explanation for advanced users: You can embed the guestbook into any php page by including the index.php of the guestbook, e.g. IMPORTANT: don't try to include the gb with an URL, the inclusion will only work with a relative path (that means that the script that tries to include the gb must be located on the same server as the guestbook). The following 3 constants should be defined before the include statement: MAINSCRIPT = the name of the top-level PHP script of your website that is responsible for the content and the inclusion. In most cases MAINSCRIPT is simply the script that includes the index.php of the guestbook, but if this script is included by another script, MAINSCRIPT must contain the name of the top-level script. IMPORTANT: this constant contains ONLY the name of your main script (e.g. "main.php") and no parameters, path or URL! SCRIPTPATH = the relative path from your MAINSCRIPT to the index.php of the guestbook. IMPORTANT: don't enter an absolute path or an URL ! PFIX = A prefix for all guestbook parameters, it's important to define a prefix if your MAINSCRIPT uses parameters with the same names the guestbook uses (e.g."lang"). Let's take a look at 3 examples: 1. Your main script: www.xy.com/vipergb/guestbook.php Your guestbook index: www.xy.com/vipergb/index.php Inclusion in guestbook.php via: 2. Your main script: www.xy.com/main.php Your guestbook index: www.xy.com/vipergb/index.php Inclusion in main.php via: 3. Your main script: www.xy.com/cms/index.php Your guestbook index: www.xy.com/php/book/index.php Inclusion in index.php via: If you don't have the possibility to define the constants you can change them on top of the index.php in your guestbook folder. ===================================================================== 4) Script parameters ===================================================================== The file index.php can be called with parameters, which can be used to determine a Skin, a language or the mode the guestbook will be represented, so that for example the same guestbook can be provided with different Skins or languages on your website. A call of index.php with parameters has the following form index.php?param1=x¶m2=y...¶mx=z whereas param1,...,paramX are one of the following parameters and x,...,z the according values for the parameters. a) skindir --------------------------------------------------------------- Forces the script to use the skin, which is given as the value of the parameter. The value must be the name of the Skin directory (case sensitve !) and if the directory doesn´t exists the scipt uses the Skin that was selected by the admin Example: index.php?skindir=Standard_German b) lang --------------------------------------------------------------- Determines the languages files in the lang directory the script shall use. The value of the parameter will be appended to the names langindex and langcountry. The call of index.php?lang=ES make sure that the script searchs for the language files langindexES.inc and langcountryES.inc and uses them to generate text outputs. Of course you must add these files to the lang folder (download the language pack rename the files). For a completely translated guestbook you should combine the call with a Skin in the desired language: index.php?lang=ES?skindir=Standard_Spanish If you have defined a parameter prefix (see PFIX under 3) all parameter names must have the leading prefix ! ===================================================================== 5) Contact ===================================================================== To contact the author you can use the forum at www.vipergb.de.vu You can report there, if you - have problems with the installation - have discovered bugs - want to offer your selfmade skins - want to do a localisation - have criticism, praise or suggestions ===================================================================== 6) Special Thanks ===================================================================== I want to thank the following people for their contribution to the ViPER Guestbook project: Xeoman Bart Oosterveld Chris Palmer Ana Chung SparoHawk Massy Laurent J.V. Dubois Alessandro Mazzuoli Dalibor Malek Dan Simonsson Peter van der Horst steinchen Alexandre Vidal Pinheiro SemSim Thu Tu Thomas Belser Bobby Tupps ...and all who helped me to find bugs ===================================================================== (c) 2004-06 by Marc Stein www.vipergb.de.vu =====================================================================