akeller's world » Anleitung

Adjusting Semantic Scuttle (Tutorial Part 2)

Andreas — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:38:33 +0000

After we installed in the first part Semantic Scuttle we want to make some adjustments to our installation in the second part.

Cleanurls

If you take a look at the links in the top-menu you see for example a link like “http://domain.xxx/populartags.php/” for the popular tags.

This is not looking nice and we are going to change this via cleanurls. After adjusting, the link should look like: “http://domain.xxx/populartags/”. This is realized via a .htaccess-file. But watch out, this is not available for all servers.

Open the file “config.inc.php” and set $cleanurls to true
$cleanurls = true;
Save the file and test if the cleanurls are working. If everything is doing fine your are done and you can skip the next steps.
If it is not working open the file .htaccess (it is in the root of your installation, if you don’t see the file ensure, that you switched on “show hidden files” in your FTP-program). In Line 29 and 30 you will find:
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?(.*) $1.php?query=$2 [L,QSA] #option 1 #RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?(.*) $1.php/$2 [L] #option 2
Add a # at the start of line 29 and delete it in line 30:
#RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?(.*) $1.php?query=$2 [L,QSA] #option 1 RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?(.*) $1.php/$2 [L] #option 2
Save the file and try again if it is now working.
If it is still not working, open the file “constants.inc.php” and commend or delete the lines 21 to 23:
// Correct bug with PATH_INFO (maybe for Apache 1) // if(strlen($_SERVER["PATH_INFO"]) // $_SERVER["PATH_INFO"] = $_SERVER["ORIG_PATH_INFO"]; //}
Save the file and try again.

If it is still not working, please leave me a comment and I will try to find a solution. Please check first if your web-server supports .htaccess.

Valid XHTML 1.1?

Start your favorite browser and open the W3-Validator put in the address of your Semantic Scuttle installation. The result will be about 28 errors und 19 warnings. This we should fix if we want to be beloved by search-engines.

If you get the error: “cannot generate system identifier for general entity “PHPSESSID”.”, open the file “index.php” and add in line 21 before:
require_once('header.inc.php');
this line:
ini_set('arg_separator.output','&');
Open the file /templates/bookmarks.tpl.php and search: echo ' ';
Add in front of src=”http://…. an alt=”":
and change the & in screener.php?sdx=1024&sdy=768&w=90&h=68&url='.$address.'" at the end there is missing a “/”, add it: $address.'" />';


After checking with the validator again there should remain only one error:

Line 28, Column 150: document type does not allow element "input" ...

Until now I didn’t figure out how to fix this error but I’m still search a solution. Maybe you know how to solve it?
Other service to generate thumbnails
Because we just edited the right place in the /templates/bookmarks.tpl.php:

echo '
http://www.artviper.net/screenshots/screener.php?sdx=1024&sdy=768&w=90&h=68&url='.$address.'">';

Here is given the code for generating thumbnails. By default this is artviper.net, if you want to use this service you should notice:

The service is only free for non-commercial sites and you should add a back-link to artviper.net.
For commercial projects you can buy a licence here.

From time to time the generation of thumbnails with artviper takes a long time, because of this I tried to find an alternative service.

Websnapr.com

Fast and reliable service, no registration needed, premium-service available.

Disadvantage: There is a watermark “by Websnapr.com” on each thumbnail
M-Software.de
Also for commercial projects free and no registration needed.

Restrictions according content e.g. no pornography.

Disadvantage: Generation of thumbnails needs some time.

Seekxl Snapr.de

Free service, back-link is needed a back-link is not needed. If you are registered (also free) you can set up an custom image if the thumbnail is not generated yet – but than you have to add a back-link to the service.
Mr-Thumb.de
Free, the generation of thumbnails could be faster.
www.webseitentuning.de
Free, unfortunately slowly.
livethumb.de
Free, watermark: “preview by liveThumb” if you don’t link back. Relative fast and reliable.
picoshot.com
Free and fast but sometimes problems to generate the thumbnail from the given site.
www.shrinktheweb.com
Free for 250,000 requests per month, pro-features for some fee. Generell registration needed. Fast and reliable. Anomaly: can not deal with ‘http://’.

Solution:

$n_address = substr($address, 7);

Than call via:

 ...Url='.$n_address.' 
capture.heartrails.com/
If you are able to speak Japanese, this service is maybe something for you.

 
All of this thumbnail-services what to have a back-link or require this explicitly. But I think, this is OK. Nothing is really free. Therefore next we will take a look, where to place this link back to the thumbnail-service.
Maybe you know an other thumbnail-service? Please leave a comment, thanks.
Templates
The different areas of Semantic Scuttle are organized by means of different files. The main of these are:

Head (header): /templates/top.tpl.php
Here you should add  some meta-tags.
Foot (footer): /templates/bottom.tpl.php
In the foot you can place the back-link to the thumbnail-service.
“About”-page: /templates/about.tpl.php
Here is a good place to add some information e.g. about your person or / and a disclaimer.

About how to change the style of Semantic Scuttle I will maybe write something later on.
Bug: Renaming Tags
In Semantic Scuttle version 0.89 is a little bug, the renaming of tags is not working. The solution is published by Andreas Glaeser.
Open the file “tagrename.php” and add in line 23 after

"require_once('header.inc.php');" following line:

$tagservice = & ServiceFactory :: getServiceInstance('TagService');

Open the file “/services/tagservice.php” starting in line 69 you find the function “renameTag” add a “return true;”, should look like:

    function renameTag($uId, $oldName, $newName) {

	$query = 'UPDATE `'. $this->getTableName() .'`';

	$query.= ' SET tag="'.$newName.'"';

	$query.= ' WHERE tag="'.$oldName.'"';

	$query.= ' AND uId="'.$uId.'"';

	$this->db->sql_query($query);

    return true;

    }

Now the renaming of tags should work fine.



This was the second part of the tutorials about Semantic Scuttle. I would very appreciate some feedback if this is helpfully for you. The translation (I’m German) takes unfortunately some time and I’m not sure about its quality. If I get the feeling, that my articles will help others than I will go on and write another article about Semantic Scuttle.



Installation of Semantic Scuttle 0.89
Andreas — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:07:04 +0000


Semantic Scuttle is an open source social bookmarking system and a further development from Scuttle. Some well known hosts uses Scuttle, e.g. Alltagz.de.
In this short tutorial I will give a short description how to install Semantic Scuttle.

For the installation you need an account with PHP and MySQL. It seems that there are also other database-systems supported but I didn’t tried to install on a different database than MySQL.
Installation

Download Semantic Scuttle form Sourceforge.net, at the moment the latest version is 0.89
Extract the Zip-File and upload the files to your web-server
Import the file “tables.sql” to your database. With phpMyAdmin this is quite simpel.
Rename the file “config.inc.php.example” to “config.inc.php” and open it with your favorite editor.  This file contains all basic information about your system

Settings in “config.inc.php”
Basic Settings
$sitename           = 'SemanticScuttle';
Name of your site, will appear in the header.
$welcomeMessage     = 'Welcome to SemanticScuttle! More than a social
bookmarking tool.';
Welcome-message, will displayed above your bookmarks.
$root               = NULL;
Leave here “NULL” if your installation is not placed in a sub folder, otherwise you should write here the url to your installation e.g. “www.yoursite.xx/subfolder/”.
$locale             = 'en_GB';
Here you can set the language of your installation.
$usecache           = false;
The cache-system, for now we leave “false”.
$dir_cache          = dirname(__FILE__) .'/cache/';
Path to cache, leave the preset value.
$cleanurls          = false;
This is for setting “nice urls”, for now leave it with the default “false”.
Database
$dbtype = 'mysql4';
Choose the type of your database, leave mysql4 for MySQL.
$dbhost = '127.0.0.1';
$dbport = '3306';
For over 99% of all installations the default settings are good.
$dbuser = 'username';
$dbpass = 'password';
Place here the username and password for your database.
$dbname = 'scuttle';
The name of your database.
$tableprefix = 'sc_';
Prefix of the tables in your database. If you imported the file “tables.sql” than leave the default.
User
$adminemail         = 'admin@example.org';
This emails-address is used if a users has lost his password and is requesting a new one.
$admin_users = array('admin');
Until now there is no user but here you should already put in your login-name. If there are more than one admin use:
array(’name1′, ‘name2′, ‘name3′);
$reservedusers      = array('all', 'watchlist');
Which words can not be used for usernames.
Antispam
For registration there is a simple antispam-question.
$antispamQuestion = 'name of this application (no Caps)';
The question, e.g. =’What is 2 plus 3′;
$antispamAnswer = 'semanticscuttle';
The answer, e.g =’5′;
The rest of the file is not important at the moment, we want to have a running system quick.  

Save the file “config.inc.php” and upload it to your webserver.
Browse to your installation. If everything is OK you will see:



	


Start page of Semantic Scuttle
Register as user
Now you should register yourself as a user. Click on the link “register”.


	


User-registration
Fill the form and click the button “register”. This will lead you to the startpage logged in as a user.


	


Start page logged in as user
Add Bookmark
Now we want to add a bookmark to your fresh Sematic Scuttle, click on the link “add a bookmark”.


	


Add Bookmark
On this page “add bookmark” you find some useful tools. At Bookmarklet there are two useful links for quick bookmarking. Especially the version (Pop-up) I like very much. Drag and drop the link to the toolbar of your browser and you can easily add bookmarks to your Semantic Scuttle.


	


Popup add Bookmark
At Import you have the ability to import Bookmarks.
Fill the required information in the form, after clicking “Add Bookmark” you be redirected  again to the start-page.


	


Semantic Scuttle with the first bookmark
You saw, it is quite easy to install Semantic Scuttle. In the next days I will write something about further adjustments of Semantic Scuttle.