Grayscale BandSite CMS Ver. 1.1.4
Introduction
This is the Grayscale BandSite CMS. This is essentially a website
that contains its own special content management system. It uses a
fixed list of optional content types to present what amounts to the
most common options on band websites.
Unlike most content management systems, such as PostNuke/ PHPNuke/
or Mambo, you are not limited to using the rather rigid layout of
the CMS. In fact, the site can more or less look however you want
it to look. The downside, however, is that you kind of need to know
what you're doing when it comes to making a website. If
you're inexperienced, that's OK too. If you follow the
instructions below, you should do OK.
Get Help
The #1 Resource for help should be the Grayscale CMS website - http://www.grayscalecms.com.
There you will find documentation, a messageboard, sample code and
other helpful information. Please be sure to contribute to the
forums so that your experiences with BandSite CMS can be used to
benefit others.
License
This software is licensed to you under the Common Public License.
See http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cpl1.0.php
for more information
Server Requirements
-
PHP 4.3+ (this CMS has been tested on PHP5+ systems, as
well)
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Operating System: Linux/ Free BSD
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Server - Apache 1.3.31 or above
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MySQL Database 4.0 or above
-
PHPMyAdmin (not required, but a good idea)
-
upload_max_filesize - If you plan on uploading MP3s, then you
must adjust this setting to be at least as large as your largest
MP3 file. The default setting for PHP is 2Mb, so this may be a
bit too small for your songs.
-
If you plan on doing anything that involves uploading images,
you also need Imagemagick installed on your server. This comes
on most hosts these days, but you should double check.
***NOTE - There's somewhat of a "bug" with the upload
of MP3s on version 1.x - namely with the fact that it can often
take a while to upload MP3s. PHP comes with a
"max_execution_time" setting of 30 seconds. This is a
security feature. If a script is left to execute indefinitely, it
can overload and crash the server. If you run into problems with
uploading MP3s, this is the reason. Ask your host to increase this
setting, but don't be surprised if they say NO.
Instructions
-
Create the database for your site. Take note of your database
name, username, password, and hostname. You'll need this
later for the config file.
-
Create your tables using the supplied SQL file. This is where
PHPMyAdmin comes in handy. Open up the
"bandsite_cms.sql" file and dump it into
PHPMyAdmin's interface for SQL commands.
-
Configure your site. Go to the "adminpanel" folder and
open the "includes" folder. In that folder, you'll
find a file called "config.php". This is your
configuration file. It is HUGE. Version 2.0 will have a
web-based configuration, because this config file is somewhat of
a pain to deal with. The config file is pretty self-explanatory.
Just be sure that you are mindful of the PHP syntax stuff. You
should see how it is done once you get into it.
-
Assemble Your Site. This is where things might get a little
tricky. Unlike some Content Management Systems, I'm not
requiring you to use any templates. This can be a good or bad
thing, depending on how you look at it. On the positive side,
you retain complete design control. On the negative side, you
have to do a little more work in designing and assembling your
own template. Here's how:
-
First, What to Know:
-
All pages of the site generate their content in a
<div> called "content"
-
All presentation (colors and such) generated by the
CMS is dictated via a CSS file called
"display.css". Don't like a color?
Change it in the CSS and it is done throughout the
site.
-
I have created four dummy files:
"header.php", "footer.php",
"navigation.php" and
"template.php". I've also created some
mockup CSS files. You can use these files to see how
everything works. You can also just modify these
files to suit your needs and use them.
-
The goal is to create your own header, navigation,
and footer files. This will create a
"wrapper" or template. Take a look at the
"page_structure.html"
file to see where I'm going with this.
-
So, Let's Make a Template (aka very quick
intro to PHP Includes)
First, a quick note - you can upload this whole site as-is
with my dummy files, create your database, and have a
working site, albeit ugly as hell and pretty sparse on
images!
-
just like any site, you're gonna design your
site and create an HTML page.
-
Once that page is designed, you're gonna carve
it up into little pieces. Remember the
"page_structure.html" page? Carve it up so
that you have "Section 1" named
'header.php' and "Section 2" named
'navigation.php' and "Section 5"
(or Section 4 and Section 5 if you're using a 3
column layout) would be 'footer.php'. Save
these files in the "includes" folder.
-
Be mindful of the PHP stuff in the header.php
include. Feel free to use my mockups as a backbone
for your site and you can benefit from things like
multiple style sheets, page-specific meta keywords
and all that.
-
Upload the site to the server
Now that you have everything set up, you can go ahead and upload
the site to your server. IMPORTANT NOTE
This CMS is intended to be uploaded into the document root of
your server - NOT A SUB-DIRECTORY. Installing this CMS into a
subdirectory will cause errors to display.
-
Modify Directories - Change Permission Settings
To "777" For The Following Directories
-
/music/
-
/images/fliers/
-
/images/gallery/
-
/images/merchpics/
-
/images/releasepics/
When you unzip the program and install it to your server, it
will come with a number of directories already created for you,
yet have nothing in them. The directory list above will be where
certain files go when you upload them for things like MP3s,
fliers, etc. But in order to be able to upload files to these
directories, you will need to change the permissions on these
folders to be "777".
-
Start entering content!
Once you've followed the steps above, simply login to your
control panel using the username and password you set up during
configuration and you can then begin entering content!
Join My Mailing List!!!
I frequently update the scripts on my site, often to add enhanced
security. Many of these updates are completely free and are 100%
compatible with the script you just purchased. Join my mailinglist
at www.karlcore.com/mailinglist
to be kept up to date.