Id like advice on available software. Im familiar with debian as the OS.


I've been asked about putting up a personal website for a large group of related families. There are about 100 members in a dozen families. Each family should have it's own public and private space. Each family member should have access to all public spaces and to thier own private family space. One member of each family will administer that families public and private spaces. Public spaces are world-readable to anyone visiting the site. Private spaces are protected with passwords and permissions. This site will be used for sharing photos, schedules, and perhaps some type of blogging, and other utilities.

None of the folks in this large group of families know much about computers aside from the usual surfing, etc. All are windows zombies.

I am looking for software that will allow for a nice user interface and very, very easy, intuitive self-administration. Something that perhaps runs on top of apache.... I don't know, i am not very familiar with web publishing.

I am fairly competant at system admin. but I do not write code (pls., no scolding...!) So I'll need to use something fairly featurful,, 'cause im not capable of modifications on my own.

I can host this myself, or have it put up with a company I know.

The last bit is that i know that many isps (I use verizon) offer personal web-space and services, but iv'e never looked at any of it. Any advice about these out-of-box services would also be very much appreciated. No sense re=building any wheels,
thanks people!
Danimalz

I suggest you begin investigating php-based CMS (content management systems) ... specifically Joomla!

I'm sure you'll find these pre-packaged (open source) systems install, simple to manage, and reliable.... but I doubt Verizon's basic home-page hosting will allow you the disk space you'll need. 100 people and all their crappy pictures can add up
You'd be better off hosting it yourself

cheers

Thank you!

Im looking at the Joomla website now. Trying to discover two things, don't seem to be apparent from a quick look.

Is this free to use?

Will it run on debian - ie. do they have .deb packages?

Do you use it?

thx again,
Danimalz

Joomla is free to use and modify because its an opensource gpled app (they broke away from mambo which is also gpled). I don't believe there are any debs or any other type of binary package. The installation just takes a few minutes (a matter of creating a database and some permissions).

Another vote for Joomla. I'm still using a version of Mambo from before the fork, wonder what kind of upgrade path they have...

I'd like to test-drive Joomla. Ive just installed an apache server on a test machine.

What are the rest of the steps needed ( i believe mysql is required?)

Please - lot's of detail - i am quite new to integrating these web-facing things.

Okay, this is where I am...

I couldn't find documentation for installing joomla without 1st installing mambo....

This is what I have:


1) Installed, tested apache2. Have put a test website on there; it can be accessed from another machine on the internal lan

2) Installed, tested mysql. I can access databases from client machines on the lan okay.

3) Installed all other related (that I can find) packages, such as PHP4

4) Installed debian package for mambo. Installed okay, no errors. I checked mysql, and there is now a database there called 'mambo' with lots of tables.

Now, the problem is, i cannot seem to 'find' mambo from a client machine. Please note that the server all this is running on is incapable of gui itself, and is running headless. So I cannot browse directly from localhost in this case.

I can still access the website running on apache. It's untouched and okay. By the way this is a very light website that doesn't even use mysql itself; strictly html as well. I do this by using firefox, and addressing it to html://192.168.0.1 apache is defaulted to /var/www/apache2-default which is where i've got the website.

Mambo appears to have 'installed' itself to /usr/share/mambo. During installation it defaulted to supporting the URL /localhost/mambo and i accepted that. It didnt' work so I reconfigured it and changed the pointer to /var/www/apache2-default (i know, this seems stupid, as there's no mambo environ. there)

Im thinking of just copying | cp -a /usr/share/mambo/* /var/www/apache2-default

would this work? Im very stuck here....

Okay, something new:

Ive discovered that when i browse to ANY php code; the browser only sees the code. It is not being run. Im googling like crazy and see lots of ref. to php4 + apache2 being a problem. I think i must fix this first - anyone any ideas?

The quickest and easiest way to try some webite/cms scripts is to get Fantastico. It automates and installs website scripts in seconds. You could get a cheap web hosting account at www.findmyhosting.com any one of these will have fantastico included: http://www.findmyhosting.com/searchr...17&sid=1086557 .

This will save you a whole load of time too.