I was curious how long it would take to install my own microforum using Laconica of which I've spoken many, many times.
It took me about 16 minutes, but I cheated. I've installed it a few times before.
Get the latest version by grabbing the link at http://laconi.ca
Today, at the top of the list: 11/23/2008 Laconica_0.6.3
The version will of course advance as time goes on.
I'm logged in via ssh and cd to the directory of the web server
cd www/mysite
wget "http://laconi.ca/laconica-0.6.3.tar.gz"
Expand the archive
tar -xvzf laconica-0.6.3.tar.gz
Symbolic link or rename this to what you like
mv laconica-0.6.3 laconica
Edit the config file
nano -w config.php.sample (save as config.php)
Create a database
mysqladmin -uroot -p create mylaconica
Initialize the database
mysql -uroot -p mylaconica
Edit the SMS carrier info
nano -w db/carrier.sql
Initialize the table for SMS carriers
mysql -uroot -p mylaconica
Add the user to access the database
mysql -uroot -p
GRANT SELECT,INSERT,DELETE,UPDATE on mylaconica.* TO 'dbuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
Copy the htaccess file
cp htaccess.sample .htaccess
CHANGE THE ROOT of the server which is 'mublog' by default
nano -w .htaccess
Look through settings again and change anything else especially the host
nano -w config.php
If you named the database anything other than 'laconica', you need to do something like this:
ln classes/laconica.ini classes/mylaconica.ini
Browse to the site.
If there's nothing there, find debug line, uncomment it and change 0 to 5:
$config['db']['debug'] = 5;
READ THE WARNING above that line. DO NOT LEAVE debug=5.
The debug level will spit everything out for you, the complaints should allow you to find the problem.
You will also probably need to chmod the avatars directory
chmod 777 avatars
It's likely you now have a working install in less that 20 minutes.
To allow posts via email, you can
check this post.
More user documentation: http://tr.im/LaconicaDoc
classes/mylaconica.ini
thank you very much