Installing scoop
I had some real problems installing scoop, none of which were actually down to a problem with scoop; although that's not how it appeared.
I followed the mod_perl instructions, and got Apache & mod_perl working (or so I thought) and ran the install.pl script. This failed with strange errors, until I installed the libexpart1-dev package (Debian system). Once I had updated the CPAN module, it ran just fine, and installed all the required perl modules.
As I already had mysql running, the database install portion went without a hitch.
The rest of the install routine went well. I selected the sort of site I was to run (path based), entered my scoop admin password & email server. Whoops, after I had entered the email server, I realised I had entered the wrong address. Oh well, I could change it later.
I added the configuration file to my apache configuration file, and restarted.
Invalid command : <perl>
Whoops. Got onto Google, and did a search. The most likely culprit was mod_perl not being installed. After fighting with the mod_perl installation for an hour or so, I managed to compile apache with mod_perl support by using the -activate-module= command to the apache config, rather than using the mod_perl script. I still don't know why that was failing.
Apache works!
I fired up Mozilla and went to http://janes.demon.co.uk/scoop/ and there it was!
I tried to log in as user scoop, and the password I'd entered during the install script. Invalid login. I tried it again, Invalid Login. I tried it with password "scoop", Invalid login. Nothing worked. This is the only problem I had with the actual scoop part of the install, the password I had entered was not working. Disaster!
I don't know what went wrong with that either. I ended up hacking the install.pl script, to read a string, output the password value of it then exit. I then used the mysql client to replace the password in the database, and I could then log in.
First problem
Remember that I'd entered my email server incorrectly? Well this caused me a bit of a problem. When I went to create a new user, scoop hung. Apache hung, everything hung. Very annoying. I logged in as scoop, and looked through every variable looking for the email server. I ended up looking through the install.pl script again, to see where it had put it. Once I'd fixed that, I was able to get scoop to mail me my password, and activated my account.
First time scoop admin
First thing I did, was start looking round the admin interface. It's very powerfull isn't it? Initially, I found the relationship between templates, blocks and boxes to be quite confusing. I couldn't work out where the extra HTML in a box was coming from, until I noticed the boxes defined a template as well. Now I've got used to it, it's very nice.
I'm currently working my way through the blocks, removing FONT tags and changing it to use style sheets instead. Once I've done that, and it looks OK I'm wondering what I should do next?
I'm not much of a Perl coder (learning though) so what would be a good thing to start with?
A few options
- Allowing user specified style sheets - Users could specify a style sheet to use, which could replace the main site one. Don't know if this is worthwhile really.
- Look around for things people want implementing - Is there a wish list anywhere?
- ???
Any ideas?
