Jun
16
NOTE
If you are upgrading from an earlier version of SkyBlueCanvas, please refer to the article on Upgrading SkyBlueCanvas.
What You Will Need (System Requirements)
- PHP v4-5.x running on Linux, Unix, FreeBSD, OpenBSD or MacOS X
Sorry, Windows servers are not supported at this time - A FTP Client (Get FileZilla from Mozilla for free)
- mod_rewrite enabled (optional but recommended)
- JavaScript enabled in your web browser
FTP Installation
- Download the SkyBlueCanvas ZIP or TAR file and extract the contents into a folder on your compter.
- Connect to your web server using your FTP client and upload the SkyBlueCanvas code.
- Change the file permissions of the entire skyblue folder to 755 (some servers may require 775). Apply the changes recursively to all directories and files in the skyblue folder.
- Rename the file /skyblue/htaccess.txt to .htaccess (dot htaccess) to enable SEF
URLs - Point your web browser to http://yourdomain.com/ or if you have installed SkyBlueCanvas in a sub-directory of your main domain, http://yourdomain.com/sub_directory_where_skyblue_is_installed/.
- Follow the instructions that appear on your screen. This will be a simple form you need to fill in.
- When you log in to the Admin Control Panel, go to Admin > Settings > Default Info, and enter the info in the form.
- That’s it.
Command-line Installation (Advanced Users)
- Download the tar file and place it in the root of your new website.
- Unpack the tarball (tar -zxf skyblue.tar.gz)
- Rename the file /skyblue/htaccess.txt to .htaccess (dot htaccess) to enable SEF
URLs - Change the owner/group of the directory contents (chown -R www:www `*`)
- Change the file permissions of the entire skyblue folder to 755 (some servers may require 775). Apply the changes recursively to all directories and files in the skyblue folder.
- Point your web browser to http://yourdomain.com/ or if you have installed SkyBlueCanvas in a sub-directory of your main domain, http://yourdomain.com/sub_directory_where_skyblue_is_installed/.
- Follow the instructions that appear on your screen. This will be a simple form you need to fill in.
- When you log in to the Admin Control Panel, go to Admin > Settings > Default Info, and enter the info in the form. This will enable emailing through your site and will set the full URL so that RSS feeds will point to your site pages.
- That’s it.
Trouble Shooting
If you get an error when you point your browser to the Setup Wizard, try setting the permissions of the /skyblue/ directory to 777. It is not recommended that you leave the permissions set to 777. The first screen of the Setup Wizard will suggest the proper settings. Once you have completed the installation, you can change the file permissions to the correct setting. If you continue to have trouble, check your hosting provider’s documentation or contact their Support Center and ask for “the correct settings for their server to allow web software to read and write files”.
You are now ready to start adding your site’s content. You can log into the SkyBlueCanvas admin control panel by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/admin.php.
Enjoy!
Comments
49 Responses to “SkyBlueCanvas Installation Instructions”
Leave a Reply
Hi,
Methinks I would be helpful to list upfront, the requirements for use of this CMS. I searched, did not find the info and departed the site.
Miguel,
Thanks for pointing out my oversight. Can’t believe I forgot to include that. The installation instructions have been updated.
Scott
I’ve installed it over xampp running in windows xp, it works fine for me except when I try to access media manager, it says that maximum execution time has been reached, I think it’s a problem with some apache script path, any idea?. Thanks in advance
I’ve tried installing using both methods and I’m still having problems. Using the FTP installation method, I ran into permissions issues and couldn’t complete the install as directed. Using the shell install, I couldn’t get the chown command to take, getting an “Operation Not Permitted” reply on each file.
The FTP installation got me closer, but I still had problems. Is there a more detailed description of what the permissions should be for each subdirectory? Please advise. Thanks.
anestesiador,
I am not familiar at all with Windows and have never installed SBC on Windows. My first guess would be that I have used the wrong directory seperators (forward slash rather than back-slash). Try posting your issue to the forum (http://forum.skybluecanvas.com) and maybe someone there can help.
Scott
Joel,
The permissions should be 755 for all directories and files. With some shared hosting server configurations we have found that 775 is required.
The `chown` will not work on a shared hosting environment because you probably don’t have sufficient privileges to change the owner of a file/dir. However, you can try doing:
chmod -R 775 skyblue_root_dir_name
Hope this helps,
Scott
Hey there!
I get this when I try to access the folder right off the bat:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in /nfs/c02/h02/mnt/22794/domains/f6designlogic.com/html/clients/ilmercato/includes/router.php on line 32
Most of the includes (when I try to go to /setup/ etc) have errors like this. Is there something I missed during the install?
I seem to be having the same problems as Humanv3. I’ve changed all the file permissions to 0755 (0775 won’t run as group writing is not allowed on my host server) and I’m getting a similar error:
Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in /share/storage/01/ar/arthurassociates/skyblue/includes/request.php on line 9
I’m currently running CMSimple which works just fine, so I’m thinking it must be something quite simple that’s stopping the admin script from running.
Hope someone can help as I really like the look of Skybluecanvas.
Andy,
The issue is related to PHP4. Two of the classes in SBC use PHP5-only constructs that I overlooked when I posted the build you have. I have fixed the problem in the latest build RC1-r156. If you download the latest build it should work fine.
Thanks,
Scott
Scott,
Many thanks, will give it a try later. I’m very much looking forward to getting it running.
Andy
Scott,
Wiped the files from the webserver, downloaded latest build and reinstalled, but still no luck, exactly the same error message. Can you think of anything else to try?
Andy A.
Andy,
Sorry about that. It appears I overlooked one of the classes when removing the PHP5 keywords. I have posted a new build (RC1-r157).
Scott
Scott,
Success! I’m at the setup stage. Many thanks.
Andy
During Sky Blue setup my web site URL cannot be saved.
Sky Blue start correctly as ‘http://acer9100.org/skyblue’ works fine and return admin page which then ask my URL address but all my tries are refused, ie.http://acer9100.org
So which web site address should I enter to fullfil Skye Blue installation ?
Regards.
Bye,
Bruno
Please cancel previous post.
I forgot ‘chown -R www-data:www-data’ on skyblue directory.
It works now.
Bye,
Bruno
Bruno,
Be sure to set the URL to http://acer9100.org/skyblue – including the subdirectory. Don’t worry if you have already gone through the setup. You can change this setting in Admin > Settings > Default Info.
Cheers,
Scott
I get the following error when I try to install skybluecanvas:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function posix_getegid() in /home/content/j/o/h/*******/html/skyblue/includes/filesystem.php on line 480
This is after having uploaded the SBC file to my web server, and then pointing my browser to http://mydomain.com/skyblue/
I am using Godaddy as my webhost with Linux and PHP 5.x and have tried both 755 and 775 as permissions for the skyblue folder.
How do I solve this issue?
I should add that I’m using the latest SBC v1.1RC build dated Sun Dec 7 00:36:43 EST 2008 downloaded from your website an hour ago.
I’m using FileZilla FTP on Mac OS X Leopard with Safari.
Apparently GoDaddy has the Posix extension for PHP disabled. There is a thread on our forum that explains a simple workaround. You can find the information at http://forum.skybluecanvas.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=221&p=1050&hilit=posix#p1050
Thanks,
Scott
I have uploaded a new build (r201) to fix the Posix Disabled error.
Scott,
Thank you for the new build. It gets us a bit further: the configuration screen does appear in my web browser and all settings appear green, except for one: Posix Library > Current Value: Off > Expected Value: Enabled.
How do I enable it?
Also, the following warning appears at the top of the screen:
“Warning!
Due to your server configuration, SkyBlueCanvas is unable to accurately determine the exact file permissions needed to run the software. You can still install the software but may need to set your file permissions to 777. You can contact your hosting provider to ask about the possible implications of doing so.”
My current permissions are set to 775, which agrees with the expected permissions.
Thanks,
Johann
I guess I could improve the wording of the warning message a bit. But the answer to your question is that you cannot enable the Posix Library. It has to be compiled into the PHP engine by your hosting provider. They probably have it disabled for supposed security reasons.
The reason the permissions say you meet the expected permissions but you still get the warning is that without the Posix Library there is no way to accurately determine what the correct “expected” values are. I chose 775 as the default expected values because on a properly configured web server, 775 would be what one would expect. However, a lot of shared hosting providers do not have their servers configured the way I would consider to be correct.
You can go ahead with the install. It should work without trouble. If the installation does not work, follow the instructions I posted on the forum (http://forum.skybluecanvas.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=221&p=1050&hilit=posix#p1050).
The only thing the Install Wizard does, really, is creates the password file, sets the site URL and tries to verify the file permissions. If the file permissions portion doesn’t work, chance are the system will still run anyway.
Scott
I was using Joomla and found that too intense for my liking and wanted something a bit easier I just installed the blue sky software and had the site up in no time. Thanks a lot for your efforts.
Cool. I’m glad you like it.
For Ubuntu users – instead of:
chown -R www:www `*`
try:
chown -R www-data:www-data bluesky/
where ‘bluesky/’ is the directory you installed everything to.
However, I am experiencing a different issue. When I go to the main/home page, all is well. When I click on the main menu to go to any other page, I get the 404 Not Found error.
I see that the files appear to be in the /var/www/skyblue/data/stories directory, but for some reason the engine can’t see them. I’ve verified that permissions are correct.
Any thoughts on what might be happening? FWIW, in the setup, I’ve tried both ‘localhost’ as well as the canonical name of the machine (which happens to be ‘ubuntuhh32′). Same result both ways.
Thanks for the tip regarding Ubuntu. I’ll add a note to the instructions as soon as I have time.
Regarding the menu links error, it appears that you have an old .htaccess file in your web root. You’ll need to update this file with the htaccess.txt file included with SBC.
Scott
Well, just to make sure – I re-invoked the .htaccess again. I re-copied over from the ’skyblue_v1.1-Stable-r237.zip’ archive. I restarted Apache – still no joy. Here’s what is in the .htaccess I have:
RewriteEngine on
ErrorDocument 404 404-page-not-found
RewriteRule xml/(.*)\.xml$ index.php?route=404-page-not-found
RewriteRule email/(.*)$ index.php?route=404-page-not-found
RewriteRule ads/(.*)$ index.php?route=404-page-not-found
RewriteRule gadgets/(.*)$ index.php?route=404-page-not-found
RewriteRule metrics/(.*)$ index.php?route=404-page-not-found
RewriteRule modules/(.*)$ index.php?route=404-page-not-found
RewriteRule data/plugins/(.*)$ index.php?route=404-page-not-found
RewriteRule tmp/(.*)$ index.php?route=404-page-not-found
RewriteRule stories/(.*)$ index.php?route=404-page-not-found
RewriteRule (.*)data/(.*)$ data/$2
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?route=$1 [L,QSA]
Is there something else I’m missing? BTW, I get the same result on my Ubuntu 8.04 server as well as Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger).
Are you sure you have AllowOverrides enabled in your httpd.conf file? It sounds like the htaccess over-rides are just being ignored altogether. If I am not mistaken, the AllowOverrides conig setting is not enabled in a default install of Apache, so you need to enable it explicitly.
Scott – you were correct. I’ve changed that an now all is well. Actually, I had to have a directory directive to AllowOverrides in the httpd.conf file, and then everything just worked. I actually stumbled over this while setting up another CMS, but checked back here to update my comments.
Scott,
I want to install a local test environment for SBC development. Windows/Apache (I see that some folks have it running on window). Are there any special instructions for this…
Everything seems to be running properly, however I cannot seem to load/access the index.php file? (Yes, I have configured Apache’s httpd.conf – ru)
I search you discussion, but did not find this topic…
Charles
Hi,
I have tried to install SkyBlueCanvas v1.1.r246 (as just downloaded from the downloads page) by following these instructions, but whenever i navigate to the directory where i have placed is (domain.co.uk/skyb/) i keep getting an error message of:
“The page isn’t redirecting properly
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.”
And the URL becomes: http://emrysgreen.co.uk/skyb/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/setup/index.php
I have CHMOD’d the whole directory and all files to 755, then 775, and even 777 and it return the same error.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
What you are experiencing is definitely not permissions-related so changing the permissions won’t make any difference. The issue is most likely related to the .htaccess file in your root web directory. I don’t know how to suggest you fix it since I don’t know what rules it contains. I don’t think it would be related to the SkyBlueCanvas htaccess file but just to make sure, re-name the file to _htaccess (this will disable it).
Thanks Scott,
When disabling the SkyBlue HTAccess file i get the following message:
Not Found
The requested URL /skyb/setup/index.php was not found on this server.
Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at emrysgreen.co.uk Port 80
And when i disable my root directory htaccess file but keep the Skyblue one active i get the same error with /setup constantly recurring, but with the skyblue htaccess disabled i also get the same not found error message.
My root htaccess file purely contains a number of redirect 301 commands for virtual sub directories.
Any other suggestions at would be great? I am keen to try this out for myself with a project upcoming i think it could work with.
Thanks
I have not seen this error before. Try replacing the contents of the SkyBlue htaccess file with the following:
# New htaccess rules
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /skyb/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?route=$1 [L,QSA]
If that doesn’t work, just turn the SkyBlue htaccess rules off and let me know when you have done so. I want to view the HTTP headers that are being sent to get a better idea of what is happening between the browser and the server.
Thanks Scott,
Im still getting the same redirection error as before though with the new ht access information.
Completely disable the htaccess and let me know when you have done so. Honestly, I don’t think the problem is with SkyBlueCanvas. There have been several thousand installs of this version and I have not seen this issue before. Also, when you disable the htaccess and get a “404 Not Found” error, that leads me to believe there is an issue with the Apache configuration. You might also check to make sure that the /skyblue/setup/ directory actually exists. One last thing you might try is deleting SkyBlueCanvas and re-installing to make sure the install is not corrupt.
After few hours I found theese few hacks very useful (mainly, if you use different language than ENGLISH and you stumbled upon diacritics):
STEP 1:
I didn’t need to translate something so simple as ‘á’ to ‘á’ so left the change only to those special chars:
includes\xml.parser.php, line 160:
find this:
$xml .= $indent.$k.’=”‘.htmlentities($v).’”‘;
change it to this:
$xml .= $indent.$k.’=”‘.htmlspecialchars($v, ENT_COMPAT, “UTF-8″).’”‘;
Anything should get saved in UTF-8 xml. No harm.
Unfortunately the includes\router.php which handles safe URLs gets messy, because of $chars = “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789_-”;
…
if (false === strpos($chars, $str{$i})) {
$str{$i} = ‘-’;
}
It means, that anything unknown in $chars gets replaced by ‘-’
Imagine having url showing http:\\www.yoursite.tld\-ivo-chy.html instead of ‘zivocichy’ originally translated from ‘živo?íchy’. It even has not the same count of chars because of the next steps… so forget about guesing the name. And the clean urls are doomed for now.
STEP 2:
What we need is to strip those extra double dots, accutes etc. from the string and make it ‘URL safe’. Workaround found on: http://sk.php.net/manual/en/function.iconv.php changed a bit to fit into includes\router.php, line 415, function normalize($str):
$r = ”;
$s1 = iconv(’UTF-8′, ‘ASCII//TRANSLIT’, $str);
for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($s1); $i++) {
$ch1 = $s1[$i];
$ch2 = mb_substr($str, $i, 1);
$r .= $ch1==’?'?$ch2:$ch1;
}
$str = $r;
Not sure if it works for every language that differs from EN, but still a good solution, because everything else still gets changed into ‘-’.
That’s for now. Try it, or leave it or even make it better… Enjoy!
Sorry. I’ve forgotten the most important thing for STEP 2 hack. Put this:
setlocale(LC_ALL, ‘en_US.UTF8′);
before:
$r = ”;
$s1 = iconv(’UTF-8?,…
to make it work.
Hi guys!
When I click on any of the buttons of my newly installed skybluecanvas webpage I get:
Object not found!
The requested URL was not found on this server. The link on the referring page seems to be wrong or outdated. Please inform the author of that page about the error.
If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.
Error 404
localhost
10/08/09 09:24:53
Apache/2.2.13 (Win32) PHP/5.3.0
Another thing, how do I add buttons to my top menu?
Manny,
It looks like the problem is with the htaccess URL routing. Since you are using Windows (which is not supported by SkyBlueCanvas), I’m not sure how to suggest a solution. I don’t know if mod_rewrite exists/works on Windows.
As far as adding menu items, you do this in Admin > Pages. When you create a new page, you can select which menu the link to that page appears.
Thanks,
Scott
Hi,
Put the site up no problems to test all worked well. Left htaccess as a txt file first time around.
Deleted it all and re-uploaded, set the permissions, renames to .htaccess and finished the setup.
But it hasn’t created the .html pages and the menu and any other links 404.
Any ideas?
Thanks
It sounds like mod_rewrite may be disabled on your server, or Apache is not configured to allow directory level over-rides of the configuration. If you are using a hosting company, check with their technical support to find out if AllowOverrides is enabled for your web directory.
If this is your own web server or you are managing the server yourself, refer to Apache’s documentation http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/core.html#allowoverride
Cheers,
Scott
Hi there –
I have installed skybluecanvas.v1.1.r246 and when I try to get to the admn screen and keep getting the following error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function xml_parser_create() in /htdocs/www/skybluecanvas/includes/xml.parser.php on line 67
I have tried all three permissions settings and get the same error each time.
Any thoughts?
Thanks so much!!!!!!!
Neille
Actually, I enabled XML through my host, filled out the first few screens and then got this error when hitting the admin screen
Fatal error: Call to undefined function ctype_alnum() in /htdocs/www/skybluecanvas/managers/login/login.class.php on line 165
OK disregard all! Enabled ctype in php.ini and I’m all set
Why are you using Wordpress for this site instead of SkyBlueCanvas?
I get this question from time-to-time and it is a valid question. SkyBlueCanvas is intended for building simple, static page web sites, not blogging. A blog is a specialized kind of site with features like comments, trackbacks, post categorization and archiving. Those are the features I need for the blog and WordPress is the best tool for those types of tasks. It is analogous, in my opinion, to use phpBB for the Forums. It’s the right tool for the job. The main SkyBlueCanvas site does use SkyBlueCanvas because it is the right tool for that job. Thanks for the question, and I hope this answer is satisfactory.
OK. I downloaded & unpacked the latest version, then uploaded it to a subdirectory on my server, which is running PHP 4.4.9. I loaded the initial page and it was just blank. White. Not even a 404. Viewing source was also blank. So I made sure everything in every subdirectory was a 755, including the .gifs and .pngs, and I still get nothing. I’m baffled.
Any ideas?
Eliminate file permissions as the problem first by temporarily changing the permissions to 777 (see “Trouble Shooting” in the instructions on this page). Also, if you have enabled .htaccess per the instructions, disable it to eliminate that as a possible problem. Finally, check your PHP logs to see if there is an error.