Moving to new subdirectory

mduke · 2010-03-05 23:58:57

First, I’m totally new to CMS, so I clearly lack some basic understanding about how textpattern works. While I’m trying to get a leg up on that, however:

I uploaded the entire textpattern-4.2.0 folder. Diagnostics had errors, but I fixed all of them. So far, so good.

But…duh-uh! I think I erred in including the parent /textpattern-4.2.0 folder in the upload (as opposed to only uploading all the contents therein). I certainly don’t want viewers to have to see /textpattern-4.2.0 in the path!

I read the manual entry on “Moving Installation from Subdirectory to Domain Root on the Same Server,” and while this is not what I want to do (URL path was fish.washington.edu/people/textpattern-4.2.0 and I want it to be fish.washington.edu/people), I figured I could just adjust relatively. Well, maybe not, since I’m still getting a bunch of errors:

Some Textpattern files have been modified:
/Shared Items/www-data/fishnet/people/textpattern/include/txp_preview.php,
/Shared Items/www-data/fishnet/people/textpattern/include/txp_tag.php,
/Shared Items/www-data/fishnet/people/textpattern/index.php,
/Shared Items/www-data/fishnet/people/textpattern/lib/class.thumb.php,
/Shared Items/www-data/fishnet/people/textpattern/lib/txplib_head.php

I tried to adjust paths in the above files, but no joy. Question is: would I better off just starting over again? At this stage of the game, given how quick it is to install, I’m thinking it might be faster to start over, but I would like to know what I did wrong, too.

Last edited by mduke (2010-03-06 00:00:45)

Gocom · 2010-03-06 00:15:02

mduke wrote:

I tried to adjust paths in the above files, but no joy.

Why did you modify the files? You don’t want to modify core files, nor you need to. Also if you modify core, you can’t update and you might break things up.

All data that needs to be modified is located in:

MySQL database
/textpattern/config.php

If you want to change the path, only thing you need to do is:

Move the files up in directory tree.
Change txpath in /textpattern/config.php.
Change URL settings in TXP/Admin/Preferences.

mduke · 2010-03-06 00:40:49

Well, there it is, then! This is what I inferred post-screwup and makes it clear that I’m better off starting over (oddly enough, much of the site seems to be working but that’s probably only because I haven’t begun to create the sections et al. for my clients). Thanks much.

Followup question: for the sake of good folder/file organization and management, I would prefer to keep all the /textpattern-4.2.0 files in their own dedicated subdir (e.g., at the same level as all the client folders). I can do this, correct?

mduke · 2010-03-12 22:02:05

Okay, I reinstalled and all went without a hitch this time (Diags = all clear).

But before I proceed with the tutorial (10 steps), I would really like to know whether this app is well-suited to what I need, which is a multi-client login that directs them to only their own content (txp obviousy does this), but which will be presented as:

1. a homepage for each client, with
2. client-created child pages that will have different names and purposes from client to client, and
3. along with (2), client ability to create their own navigation menu.

The only commonality in all this is (1) my ability to impose some design elements (css) and the administrative aspects (managing multiple clients who do not interact with each others’ website content).

Is Textpattern a good fit for this? It almost seems what I seek is somewhat the opposite of what txp is mostly used for, which is a “many people edit various parts of one website”, whereas I want a 1-to-1 relationship of client-to-website content.

els · 2010-03-12 22:19:07

You may want to use the multi-site setup. Some links: TXP Tips, forum thread.

jsoo · 2010-03-12 22:23:24

mduke wrote:

Is Textpattern a good fit for this? It almost seems what I seek is somewhat the opposite of what txp is mostly used for, which is a “many people edit various parts of one website”, whereas I want a 1-to-1 relationship of client-to-website content.

If I’m understanding you correctly, these are really separate websites, each with its own appearance, structure, and content, with no interlinking, and with each client unable to view any admin pages of any other client. Are these part of the same domain, or separate domains for each client? At any rate, if this is what you’re after it is, as you say, not really how Txp works. You’d need to make a separate installation for each client. There are a couple of things you can do to unify that: set up as a multisite installation, so that all sites share the same core (the /textpattern directory), and run all sites off the same database, giving each site its own table prefix.

On the other hand if what you want is something a bit more unified, it could be done as a single installation but Txp is not really designed to give complete isolation to different site admins. Maybe could be done, especially with the bot_privs plugin.

mduke · 2010-03-12 22:39:18

Thanks much to both of you. I did a very quick read of multi-site and this may work. It looks to afford some streamlining of the process by allowing me to have a single set of core files, while enabling separate admin interface (and files) for each user. I guess my next question will be whether my clients (mostly young enough PhD-level folk who are pretty good with technology) will feel comfortable with the admin user interface.

By the way, Jeff: all the sites would be hosted within the same subdirectory of the same domain and server (i.e., fish.washington.edu/people/johnson, fish.washington.edu/people/smith, etc.).

That said, do you still think a multi-site approach might do the job? My take is “yes” but it might not be the best solution in the long run.

About the only other thing I can think of, having reviewed (too) many CMS apps out there, is to build something from scratch, but I don’t know enough about programming to enable users to create their own new pages, so I would still have to be the one to do that. In my situation (10-15 clients for now), this might be feasible, but not very … “elegant”!

Thanks! (Especially for helping me in my basic understanding of CMS. It’s been very difficult to get other CMS developers to understand my concern about my particular situation.)

jsoo · 2010-03-12 23:12:51

Another way to approach the question is to look at what benefits you expect to get from CMS-driven sites. As I see it the main benefit is abstracting your content such that you can easily present different views of the same content, and automatically generate indexes and lists of related content. How will each client site be structured? What are the needs for indexing, categorizing, and presenting related content?

The Txp multisite setup does have some advantages (I use it, have even posted my own notes on setting it up), but the streamlining you get isn’t much evident in day-to-day site administration. It makes upgrading a group of sites much quicker, makes for tidier file trees, and allows for secure admin login if you are set up for SSL. But if you have to make a design change to every site, more than likely you’ll have to go through each site (although depending on what common elements you have you could find ways to share resources).

mduke · 2010-03-12 23:28:17

Acknowledged. Most of the design can be administered with a single css file and a common background image, and design changes across sites will be rare. No SSL, but I can probably apply a bunch of SSH SACLs to keep it safe. So this may still be worth pursuing (not to mention even if I don’t use it, I’m curious to see how it works generally and plan to read through the tutorial).

One (hopefully final) question: the clients do all use the same, single administrative inferface to log in, correct?

jsoo · 2010-03-12 23:44:48

mduke wrote:

One (hopefully final) question: the clients do all use the same, single administrative inferface to log in, correct?

No, multisite behaves like separate sites in all respects other than where the core files are located. That is, each client would have a separate login address.

stephan · 2010-03-13 09:37:27

If you think of multisite of “just” a couple of virtualhosts that accidentally include files from a shared textpattern path you’re right on spot :-)

I just recently set up my first multisite and it works just like a charm – you won’t be able to share any content or plugins so basically every client is separated from all the other clients. You can also use different databases for each client – or just different prefixes.

laptophobo · 2010-06-17 14:43:48

I’m having a similar problem after moving my site from a folder within my server to the root. The site works fine, except that all of the Article links are still pointing to the old folder where the web was at before (the file no longer exists).

Gocom said that only 2 things needed to be updated:
◦MySQL database
◦/textpattern/config.php

I’ve already updated the paths in config.php file, and I’ve updated the Admin > Preferences paths. But I don’t know how to modify the MySQL database.

Help.

Thanks.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#1 2010-03-05 23:58:57

Moving to new subdirectory

#2 2010-03-06 00:15:02

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#3 2010-03-06 00:40:49

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#4 2010-03-12 22:02:05

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#5 2010-03-12 22:19:07

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#6 2010-03-12 22:23:24

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#7 2010-03-12 22:39:18

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#8 2010-03-12 23:12:51

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#9 2010-03-12 23:28:17

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#10 2010-03-12 23:44:48

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#11 2010-03-13 09:37:27

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

#12 2010-06-17 14:43:48

Re: Moving to new subdirectory

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