Help:COAP-3180/hw2

Homework 2 - COAP 3180 Fall 2 2007

COAP 3180 Course Page

Summary

Go on with the classroom activity, i.e.

• Configure a portal in a WAMP setting
• We strongly suggest to work with the Joomla portalware

Homework tasks

1. Think about a web application done with a content management system
   • Examples: A portal for an association or an institution
2. Select an environment to work with, i.e. choose between:
   • WOS on a memory stick. Easiest to install. Runs from any directory, including a memory stick
   • A WAMP of your choice on your personal laptop. We suggest to download and install WampServer. You get some extra functionality compared to WOS, but it will not run on a memory stick
   • Installation with a web hosting service. Best solution if you plan to profit from this course to start a web application that you actually might use.
3. Write down functionalities one'd like to have
   • Implement the ones that you can manage
   • We will discuss the result during our next meeting and then discuss how add some more features to your portal

Dates

• This homework is due at start of the week 3 Monday lesson
• The instructor will ask you to present purpose and current state
• A further homework will then require from you to add extra information / modules
• Each homework counts 10% in your global evaluation. The six best homeworks will be taken into account.

Evaluation

• Task completion (all required elements are present)
• Quality of your configutation.
• Note. Before I will evaluate this homework, we will discuss your first attempt in the classroom on week three.

Tip: Quality is essentially related to the idea that your applications are useful to a given range of users.

Tips on how to do this are below.

Tips about the LAMP/WAMP environment

WOS

The instructor will provide you with 2 versions of a wos distribution.

Medium distribution

wos-dist.zip - 28 MB

• includes several web applications
• May take up to an hour to unzip on a memory stick
• Unzippe Size: about 182 MB (!) on a stick and 123 MB on a hard disk

Small distribution

wos-joomla.zip - 17MB

• only includes the Joomla portal and the MySQL database server administration tool (phpmyadmin)
• Unzips in about 20 minutes depending on your model
• Unzipped Size: about 105MB on a memory stick and 77 MB on hard disk

You also can "mix" your own if you wish to try. Go to: http://www.chsoftware.net/en/useware/wos/wos.htm?action=download

Make sur that you get:

• An Apache webserver
• A MySQL database server
• A PhP
• Joomla
• Phpmyadmin

You always can add additional packages from the wos mixer web site

IMPORTANT:

• Install a wos mix first on your harddisk. Installing it on a memory stick may create write errors. You then can copy to a memory stick (again this may take an hour or more, since memory sticks take a long time to copy a few thousands of little files).
• If you have installed an application package (TYPO3, Joomla, WordPress etc.), the administration login always will be "admin" with the password "password"!

Here is a recent screendump of the WOS mixer:

WOS Mixer - selection of WAMP configuration and the Joomla! Portalware

Installation with a provider or a WAMP system

When installing it for the first time, Joomla! will ask for the following information:

• The name of your MySQL database - (this may be pre-set on some hosted server set-ups)
• The name of the MySQL host - This is usually called "localhost" if you are installing on a PC or a local server
• A MySQL username - This may have been allocated by your server provider - a local MySQL installation generally has the default administrator username set as "root".
• A MySQL password - This may have been allocated by your server provider - a local MySQL installation generally has the default administrator password set to a blank field, unless this was manually changed during installation of the database server.

Then read the installation manual (see below)

Help: the Joomla website includes various forms of help, e.g.

• Installation Manual (for those who wish to install Joomla with a hosting service).
• The big PDF Manual

Joomla configuration

When you first start up Joomla 1.x you will see something like this:

Joomla 1.x default startpage

Links

Main links in this wiki

• WAMP
• web hosting service
• Joomla

Examples

• List of sample sites