Apartment Complex/Community Dynamic Content System - Software??

[mbressman]

Hi,

I'm currently trying to design/set-up a dynamic content system for the apartment complex/community in which I live. Initially, the system that I set up will basically just be used for residents to submit items they'd like to sell (which then must be approved by the apartment complex staff before its posted publicly - sort of like a news submission and approval system). However, eventually it will be expanded to include other services, including:
maintenance services (submission of maintenance requests, etc.)
FAQ for apartment complex
reservations ability for our banquet center
calendar
photo album
etc
I've looked at phpBB, but since one of the main concerns is that just about everything submitted must be approved before appearing publicly, I'm not sure phpBB would work without extensive modification. I've also looked at phpNuke, and while it looks promising initially, it appears to have too much that i don't want and not enough expansion capability (calendar, photo album, etc.). Does anyone have any other free software packages that might work, or ideas how I might be able to customize phpNuke or phpBB to work for this? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[ednark]

You might want to give these guys an email. This system was orig developed for a college environment, which has basically the same needs you have on a much larger scale. I don't personally know most of this round of people in charge of the project but the system might be close to what you want already.


http://www.sinapse.org/

[Sgarissta]

I'd actually say sinapse is probably overkill for this project and would require a lot of custom development. If you don't mind getting your hands good and dirty, it wouldn't be terrible way of going about it. The virtual market (i think its still called that) module could easily handle your first point. I'm not aware of anything that could handle reservations, although you could probably use the new calendar module as a base for it.

The more that I think about it...sinapse may be a pretty good solution for you :)

How'd you come across inspase ednark?
(i did a fair bit of sinapse hacking at oklahoma state a year or so back, and knew some of the OU folks)

[ednark]

oh, ok quick story...

sinapse originated at William and Mary (http://sin.wm.edu/)... as a small perl hack with a lot of useful features... I got on the team then and when it was ported over to php... eventually we did a rewrite in php... orig ppl split off to continue development at OU (http://sin.ou.edu/)... there was a falling out betwee the OU and WM team and remenants at W&M used a different seperate rewrite of mine before the project became sinapse, but because of damb-dumbass lawyers are restricted from distributing code as a project like OU does.

there was a failed rewrite in Zope (http://www.zope.org/) that was buried quietly in the back yard late at night somewhere in there also.. that was a fun summer for everyone :)

all in all the project was a blast to be part of. so I'm familiar with the project for the most part and with many of the first and second generation guys. it seems suited for the task at hand. im just not sure how much tweaking the code will take to work for mbressman. One college had one part-time student keepig up the whole local site so I think it is definately doable.. or at least worth a checking-out.

[mbressman]

Hey, thank you all so much for your input. It looks like Sinapse could really work great for what I want it for. However, I wanted to test it out before doing anything, and unfortunately the server where I was going to test it out doesn't have PEAR installed, so now I have to go install PHP, MySQL, and PEAR on my local computer's IIS...which I imagine is going to be a pain...but once I get that, I bet Sinapse will be great!! Thanks again everyone!!! And please feel free to give me any other input that you think might help...thanks!

[ednark]

pear simply requires the base pear library in the include path..

it's possible to just copy the a whole good /PEAR/ root directory somewhere where you can get it... and then setting the include path to be...


set_include_path(get_include_path() . ":" . $path_to_your_local_pear);


that was a SIN trick we used for quite a while.. since local distributions couldn't be sure their server would have pear...

so if you get the sinapse package it may still take care of this for you

[mbressman]

I'm relatively new at this whole thing...but if I understand what your saying correctly, you mean that I can basically take PEAR and put it in a directory within Sinapse and just change the path of where PEAR is referenced in Sinapse files to the new directory I've just created. Is that correct? If so, how do I go about doing this??

FYI: I don't have any sort of administrative rights on the server, but simply have my own set of directories which I control as well as associated databases...so within those directories I can do what I want, but aside from that, I can't do anything, and I'm assuming I couldn't install anything on the server either...

Thanks for the help!

[ednark]

you mean that I can basically take PEAR and put it in a directory within Sinapse and just change the path of where PEAR is referenced in Sinapse files to the new directory I've just created


kinda... PEAR itself assumes all pear files are directly in the include path... so any calls with pear to other pear files is tricky to alter

your include_path is in your php.ini file

the only thing in my include path originally form my windows installation of php5 was '.'

so every call to include() or require() looked on in '.' or the current directory for the file, and didn't look anywhere else

after installing pear i changed it to

'.;C:\php5\pear'

so now include('PEAR.php'); will look first for '.\PEAR.php' and not find it. Then look in C:\php5\pear\PEAR.php and find it. you can add as many paths seperated by ; on windows or : on *nix/bsd systems

so if you don't have write access to your local php.ini file you can get around this by manually setting your include_path at the beginning of each script.. so subsequent calls to include() and require() can be made without thought to the local pear path.

Solution 1 )

put the include_path fudge in a file by itself... then have each file include that fudge file.

./pathfudge.php

<?php
set_include_path(get_include_path() . ":" . '/lib/pear/');
?>


./index.php

<?php
require_once('./pathfudge.php');
include('/HTML/QuickForm.php');
# etc....
?>



./admin/new/user.php

<?php
require_once('../../pathfudge.php');
include('/HTML/QuickForm.php');
# etc....
?>


you will have to make sure each and every file in your systems includes pathfudge.php at the correct depth

Solution 2 )
see if your webhost allows .htaccess files to be used. just plop a .htacess file in each directory setting whatever path you want


php_value include_path ".;C:/php5/pear/"

----

Punchline: Ask very nicely for your host to install the pear libraries you need, and adjust the include path to reflect pear.

[mbressman]

ednark,

first, thank you so much for all the help. I think I got the gist of what you are saying. Basically, it looks like solution #2 would obviously require the least amount of effort, and I'm pretty sure it would work in my case since I already use .htaccess files elsewhere on the same server to perform other functions, such as security and determining the default file to open when browsing to that path, etc. (I wish I could ask nicely for my host to install Pear, but my host is not very accomodating unfortunately).

So, basically I should download Pear and put it in a directory on the server somewhere and then set up the .htaccess to reference that directory, correct? If its an Apache server running on some type of Unix system, what would the reference look like? Also, will this screw up anything else within sinapse? And finally, how exactly do I set up Pear? It seems there are a ton of packages available (http://pear.php.net/packages.php) and I'm not sure which ones to use or which ones I even need...and then all I need to do is unzip them, upload them to the server, and I'm set?? Or is there something more I need to do? Thanks again!!

[ednark]

you sound like you go it, thats about it...

if you really wanna get tricky you could try this...

don't set include path directly in .htaccess, but set

auto_append = /path/to/preload.php

or some such thing

then make the change within php with the code i applied... that way if you want to make a change to the include path.. you only need change the one php file and not every single .htaccess file

tell us if you get somethign working

---------

.htaccess should not screw anything up with sinape


---------

Pear stuffs install in a specific way into a specific directory structure... there should be a pear commandline utility included with your php install somehwere near the top directory... i would use that to install stuff into its default place on your local computer... 'phpdefault/PEAR/' on my computer... then once things are installed.. just copy the whole directory out to where you will want it finally on the webhost...

the sinapse docs should tell you which pear libraries it requires.. i believe it only needs a few basic ones

[mbressman]

Yup...I got it all working. To be on the safe side, I've put a .htaccess file in each and every directory within sinapse (and its modules) so that any file anywhere within sinapse can find Pear if it needs to...by doing this, will I disrupt anything else?

So, now I've gotten sinapse fully working...the problem is that the virtual marketplace is open to any registered users. Basically, I'd like it so that there is no registration process and visitors can submit items to the virtual marketplace which then have to be approved by administrators before the become public. I guess I'll have to work on modifying the code...although I don't know if I'll even be able to figure it out...so if anyone wants to help...let me know ;)

Thanks again endark!!

[ednark]

i edited my earlier message to be more better like..

your next question sounds like a job for....

http://www.sinapse.org/forums/