SkyBlueCanvas Installation Instructions

June 16, 2008

Related Items none

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)

  1. PHP v4-5.x running on Linux, Unix, FreeBSD, OpenBSD or MacOS X
    Sorry, Windows servers are not supported at this time
  2. A FTP Client (Get FileZilla from Mozilla for free)
  3. mod_rewrite enabled (optional but recommended)
  4. JavaScript enabled in your web browser

FTP Installation

  1. Download the SkyBlueCanvas ZIP or TAR file and extract the contents into a folder on your compter.
  2. Connect to your web server using your FTP client and upload the SkyBlueCanvas code.
  3. 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.
  4. Rename the file /skyblue/htaccess.txt to .htaccess (dot htaccess) to enable SEF URLs
  5. 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/.
  6. Follow the instructions that appear on your screen. This will be a simple form you need to fill in.
  7. When you log in to the Admin Control Panel, go to Admin > Settings > Default Info, and enter the info in the form.
  8. That’s it.

Command-line Installation (Advanced Users)

  1. Download the tar file and place it in the root of your new website.
  2. Unpack the tarball (tar -zxf skyblue.tar.gz)
  3. Rename the file /skyblue/htaccess.txt to .htaccess (dot htaccess) to enable SEF URLs
  4. Change the owner/group of the directory contents (chown -R www:www `*`)
  5. 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.
  6. 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/.
  7. Follow the instructions that appear on your screen. This will be a simple form you need to fill in.
  8. 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.
  9. 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!

Discussion

  1. 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 | August 4, 2008, 2:37 pm

  2. Miguel,

    Thanks for pointing out my oversight. Can’t believe I forgot to include that. The installation instructions have been updated.

    Scott

    admin | August 4, 2008, 2:49 pm

  3. 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

    anestesiador | August 22, 2008, 12:00 am

  4. 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.

    Joel S. | August 27, 2008, 3:15 pm

  5. 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

    admin | August 28, 2008, 9:19 am

  6. 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

    admin | August 28, 2008, 9:22 am

  7. 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?

    Humanv3 | November 26, 2008, 12:23 am

  8. 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 A. | November 27, 2008, 9:20 am

  9. 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

    admin | November 27, 2008, 10:11 am

  10. Scott,

    Many thanks, will give it a try later. I’m very much looking forward to getting it running.

    Andy

    Andy A. | November 28, 2008, 3:42 am

  11. 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 A. | November 28, 2008, 11:14 am

  12. 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

    admin | November 28, 2008, 11:38 am

  13. Scott,

    Success! I’m at the setup stage. Many thanks.

    Andy

    Andy A. | November 28, 2008, 2:42 pm

  14. 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

    Bruno Costacurta | November 29, 2008, 4:04 pm

  15. Please cancel previous post.
    I forgot ‘chown -R www-data:www-data’ on skyblue directory.
    It works now.

    Bye,
    Bruno

    Bruno Costacurta | November 29, 2008, 4:19 pm

  16. 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

    admin | November 29, 2008, 6:33 pm

Post a comment