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Installation Guide
Table of Contents
Requirements
You'll need a Web server with PHP v4.03+ and a MySQL
database v3.23.20+. Recommended PHP is 4.03pl1 or newer and
MySQL 3.23.37 or newer. PHP will need to be configured with
session and MySQL support; and, you will need GD support to
use the player charts. SportsPHool also requires the ADODB database
abstraction library and the PHPlot library. Recent
versions of these libaries are bundled with the SportsPHool
application (currently ADODB 1.40 and PHPlot 4.4.6);
however, you may choose to use a newer version if you wish.
SportsPHool should run regardless of whether you have
transparent SID's enabled, or the users have cookies
enabled. If you have difficulties with SportsPHool after
installation, consult the Support resources at SportsPHool's
Sourceforge site.
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Installation
Upload all files in the root SportsPHool directory and the
admin, assets and includes subdirectories to your Web
server (do not upload the manuals subdirectory). Make sure
you upload the .html, .php, .css and .js files as ASCII and
the various image files as binary.
Auto-install
From your Web browser, run the setup.php
script. The first step in the installation process is to
choose a location for the configuration file. Since this
script will hold your database variables, location can be
important. (See the Security section
below.) A default location of your main SportsPHool
directory is suggested. If you change this value, be sure
to use the full system path. Click "On to Step 2=>" and
you'll be able to enter your configuration information.
See the configuration section for
a full description of all the configuration variables.
Various defaults will be set, but you can change any of
these. Once you've entered all your configuration
variables, click "Save configuration..."
If you don't see any error messages, and you see the
success message, you are ready to run SportsPHool. Before
doing so, DELETE SETUP.PHP FROM YOUR WEB
SERVER!. Browse to your main page (for example:
http://www.yourdomain.com/sportsphool/index.php), click the
Register/Sign On link, log in as an existing user using the
Administrator username and password you chose in setup step
2, and you're ready to roll! See the Admin Manual for instructions on running
SportsPHool.
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Manual install
Edit manuals/sample.config.php with the values
necessary to run your application. See the configuration section for information on
the variables listed in this file. Rename the file to
whatever you wish and upload it to your server. Edit
shared.php to point to your new configuration
file (line 3, $configfile = "";).
Edit manuals/maninstall.sql and change the
table names to begin with the prefix you placed in your
config file. Change the username, fullname, password and
email for user #1 in the INSERT statment for the
{prefix}Players table. Upload the new .sql
file to your server and run it on your MySQL server
with:
mysql -hhost -uusername -p database <
/path/to/maninstall.sql
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Configuration
These are the configuration values you will need to enter
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Name of site: the site name as you would
like it presented in the title bar and page header
(examples: "SportsPHool", "Pigskin Prognosticators").
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Site slogan: a slogan for your site,
e.g. "For sports PHanatics everywhere!".
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Table prefix: a code to prepend to all
table names to avoid conflicts with other tables that
might be held in the same database, or use it to run more
than one SportsPHool installation from the same database.
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URL to site: the main URL to your site;
do not use a trailing slash (e.g.
http://www.yourdomain.com or
http://www.isp.com/yourname/sportsphool); the default
filled in by the setup script should be correct.
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URL to admin site: the URL to your admin
pages, this will generally be your main site URL with
/admin added; however, you can move it to a different
directory or even a different domain!
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URL to assets: the URL to the directory
where your images, stylesheets and JavaScript source
files will be held; the default of your main site domain
with /assets added is acceptable.
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Filesystem path to site: this is the
full computer system path to your Web site, e.g.
/usr/www/users/username/sportsphool or
c:\Inetpub\wwwroot.
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Filesystem path to includes: the full
computer system path to the include files, the default of
main path plus /includes is acceptable.
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Name of HTML layout: the name of the
HTML/CSS templates that will be used for creating each
page; the Formatting section below
has more information on how this is used.
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Use DST?: Whether or not to use Daylight
Savings Time (or whatever your country calls the summer
time adjustment); the Admin
Manual has more information on how this works. For
manual installs, this value should be either TRUE or
FALSE (or 1 or 0).
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DST start time: the time the system
should start making DST adjustments, in YYYY-MM-DD
format; e.g. 2001-10-28 02:00. For manual installs, this
value is stored as a UNIX timestamp.
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DST stop time: the time the system
should stop making DST adjustments, in YYYY-MM-DD format;
e.g. 2002-04-02 02:00. For manual installs, this value is
stored as a UNIX timestamp.
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Hours of DST offset: the number of
hours by which times should be adjusted during DST,
e.g. -1 or 1. For manual installs, multiply the number
of hours by 3600 to get the total number of seconds
difference.
A few notes on DST: if using DST, you should adjust it
for the season during which your sports will be played.
For example, the NFL begins during DST in the US and
ends during Standard Time. So the system should view
DST as beginning in October with an adjustment
of -1 and when setting up the NFL games, you would use
-4 as the default offset from GMT. This will give you a
time offset of -4 for all games prior to 10/28 and -5
for all games on or after 10/28. See the Admin Manual for more information on
how DST affects the games. (If it all sounds too
complicated, just don't use it.)
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Ties count as win? whether or not to
count tie games as a win. If you say "Yes" here, every
player would score a point for a tie game. For manual
installs, use -1 (negative one) for wins, 0 (zero) for no
win.
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Width of team logos: if you will be
using team logos and they are all a standard size, enter
the width here; your pages will dislpay faster.
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Height of team logos: if you will be
using team logos and they are all a standard size, enter
the height here; your pages will dislpay faster.
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Database server name: the name of your
database server, e.g. localhost or db.isp.com.
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Database user name: the user name with
which you access your database.
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Database user password: the password
with which you access your database.
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Database name: the name of the
database where you will be storing SportsPHool
information.
Note: if the username/password combo
above does not allow creation of databases, you will
need to manually create the database (or have your ISP
create it for you) before running the
setup script. The username/password combo you use for
the database must have create/drop
table access as well as normal
select/insert/delete/update access.
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Administrator full name: your full name.
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Administrator email: your email.
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Administrator user name: a user name you
will use for administering SportsPHool.
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Administrator password: a password you
will use for administering SportsPHool.
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Security
The following is not a treatise on security; however, it
should serve to make your Sports PHool installation less
prone to hackers.
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Move your admin directory
Even though the admin scripts are password-protected by
SportsPHool, for greater security, you can move the
admin directory; it can even reside in a different
domain; although, it must still be on the same physical
server. This will help defeat anyone trying to find the
admin script. If you do move the admin directory, you
will need to edit index.php in that directory to point
to the proper location of shared.php.
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Run your scripts under your user ID (wrapped)
This is a smart thing to do with all scripts,
especially if you are on a shared server. Ask your Web
host or consult your Web server documentation for
information on running your scripts wrapped. If you are
able to do this, you can change the permissions of all
.php files so that only you have access to them. (Under
*nix, this would be chmod 700 on all .php files.) Be
sure to leave any .html, image, .css, or .js files
accessibe to the Web server (e.g. chmod 707).
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Move config.php outside the Web tree
You can place your configuration file outside the
directory structure accessible to the Web server (e.g.
to your home directory). Be sure to put the correct
path in during the setup process. You can also, of
course, give the config file a different name to help
hide it from potential hackers.
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Administration
Administration of Sports PHool is covered in the Administrator's Manual.
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Formatting
The primary content of Sports PHool is generally produced
in tables. This content is wrapped by two files (a header
and footer). Additionally, a navigation menu file is
needed, and a CSS file is optional. Header, footer and
navigation files are placed in the layout
subdirectory of the includes directory. The
CSS file is in the assets directory. The names
of the files are determined as follows:
Name of layout (from config file) +
(.header/.footer/.mainnav/.mainstyle) + (.php/.css)
When creating new files, use this naming scheme. So, for
example, for a format named "myformat", name your files
myformat.header.php, myformat.mainnav.php,
myformat.footer.php, myformat.mainstyle.css; and
place them in the appropriate directories.
You can work off the existing files to create new formats,
but there are a few things to keep in mind.
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The header must start the BODY of the page, and it must
include the call to the CSS file (if desired) and the
call to the writelocal.js file.
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The mainnav file must be included either in the header or
footer (or both). This file is not called from each
script, so leaving it out of one of the other two files
will leave your visitors without navigation.
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No formatting is specified within the main
content of Sports PHool! Tables are produced
with class attributes for alternating rows,
and various other classes are specified for special
output. Any style added to this content will have to come
from a CSS file. See the default.mainstyle.css file for
comments on how to produce CSS for the main content. You
can, of course, style the header, footer and mainnav in
any way you like.
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The mainnav file contains some programmatic checking to
make the menus context specific. Be sure, when styling
this file, that you do not destroy the code flow.
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There is no requirement to keep the "Powered by Sports
PHool" ad in the footers.
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Playing
Information on playing Sports PHool is located in the
player help files accessed from links within the main
program.
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