help

This is the main help page of the pyguicms project. Many references that may point to other pages are listed here. Do not hesitate to leave a comment on this page or the PYGUICMS FAQ.

Introduction

This page give some help about the PYGUICMS project. There's actually not yet that much of informations right now. Take also a look to the PYGUICS FAQ if you not find back your answer. Do not hesitated to contact us.

The PYGUICMS is a Pythonized version of the GUICMS project. Yet Another Content Management System. A tool to provide some "data" on the web. The GUICMS project was written in PHP code and used MySQL as database back-end. The project started after a need to have a tool to publish some data. Mostly some articles, notes about some stuff. I wanted a little links section to store all my lovely links. Later I decided to add some articles (my own notes) of some different stuff. Then there was a need for a little blog and a guestbook... And so has the GUICMS born and became what it is. Yeah, some very basic stuff.

The big problem with the GUICMS project is that it is only able to use the MySQL. There was no MVC (Model View Controller) paradigm way. All the PHP code is hard coded in between the HTML stuff. I had not make use of a templating system. Once the GUICMS became bigger, it became more and more difficult to manage all that stuff. That's why I had a need to change many things. A need to use a MVC way and not limited to the MySQL.

Honesty, i love much more Python than PHP. I already use Python for some administration task where a shell script may be not optimal for such tasks. PHP may be used for admin task but that's lesser common. PYGUICMS make use of the TurboGears web framework and is compatible with different database back-end. Such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, ... That's why I have choice that Python web framework. "Using tools i like."

*NOTE: The PYGUICMS is not yet usable like expected at this stage, like there's still many things left to do. At this stage, it will be only interesting for developers and for testers, debuggers. There's not yet a first stable release.*

The PYGUICMS FAQ

The PYGUICS FAQ contains the frequently asked questions. Check it out! You may probably find there your answer too. Don't hesitate to contact us or leave a comment if there's not yet some information for a particular topic of to less informations.

Setup

The PYGUICMS project should work everywhere Python is installable. This may say that the PYGUICMS should be compatible with almost every most know operating system. Checkout the Python website and look if Python may be installed on your Operating System.

If you have tested the pyguicms on another distribution or operating system listed below, please contact the author of the pyguicms to let it know. It will be interesting to fill more informations about other distributions/operating systems.

Requirements

• python2.4 (http://www.python.org)
• python2.4-pysqlite2 (if you want to use it with sqlite)
• And whatever python-database related stuff you want to use

Installation

Some parts of the setup may be generic and other may be related to the operating system you may use. So lets first start with the installation part. We may ensure that all the requirements are been installed.

Get the informations of the README.txt file

(Debian) GNU/Linux

This may apply to some other GNU/Linux distributions. You may take a look in you package management tool for the package python-markdown.

On Debian you may use the follow command to install the needed package:

aptitude install python-turbogears

There may a need to install a few more packages...

You can also make use of the easy_install (included in python-setuptools) to install the most recent stable version. If you proceed so, i suggest you to make use of paco to track the installed files. See the LFS section bellow.

Note for the old-stable (Sarge) users: I have not yet get TurboGears working on a Debian Sarge box. There is a little problem with the sqlite version available on Debian Sarge. I guess with other database backends there will be no problem. But i have not yet tested like i make use of sqlite at this stage in the development of this stuff. But i guess that these users have forget to upgrade his box. So, i don't care :-p

Install from "source"

You can easy use the tgsetup.py file to download the needed stuff and install this in a very easy way.

MS Windows

Windows operating system. We should need to have python2.4 and python-setuptools installed and fetch the tgsetup.py from the TurboGears website and then run python tgsetup.py to install TuroboGears. Then you be able to run pyguicms.

But that's my big guess about it! The pyguicms need to be are tested on a MS box.

I suggest to install the ActivePython from ActiveState. This is a bundled Python2.x (2.4 or 2.5) version with some extra win32 modules. This is a very interesting start bundle for Microsoft Windows.

For LFS (Linux from scratch)

Note: I used the paco source package manager to track down all the stuff i install. See http://paco.sourceforge.net Like we install everything from source on a LFS box it's much more easier to manager the installed stuff with the paco package manager, we can easy see where the installed file are and to remove the packages (installed files) later. paco have also some nice features, like the pacoball that permit to make a tar ball of the installed package, so that you later more can reinstall the package or to install it on other boxes.

You not need to make use of paco. It will just help you a bit. I recommend it if you not yet make use of a system to track down the packages you install from source.

Download the tgsetup.py from the TurboGears website. It will download all the required dependencies. Further python-setuptools will be installed by the same way. What will be useful to install some other python stuff later.

The easiest way to install all the needed stuff is:

I used paco as source package manager.

paco -lp turbogears-and-depencies-1.0.1 "python tgsetup.py"

Then i can watch the installed files with:

paco -f turbogears-and-depencies-1.0.1

There is also a little GUI, see gpaco. Refer to the paco documentation for more info.

The following packages will be automatically installed:

setuptools-0.6c5
TurboGears-1.0.1
SQLObject-0.7.3
configobj-4.4.0
RuleDispatch-0.5a0-dev_r2115
FormEncode-0.7
elementtree-1.2.6-20050316
cElementTree-1.0.5_20051216
PasteScript-1.3
simplejson-1.6
CherryPy-2.2.1
TurboKid-0.9.9
TurboCheetah-0.9.5
TurboJson-1.0
PyProtocols-1.0a0
PasteDeploy-1.1
Paste-1.3
kid-0.9.5
Cheetah-2.0rc7

Note: This way of installing TurboGears and all his required dependencies is not the recommended way if you want to track each different required package and to be able to have a full control of all the installed requirements. I mean; if you install later some other stuff that depend on the TurboGears and then you remove the TurboGears. There will be stuff missing.

What i recommend is to first install setuptools with the paco source package manager and then install one be one all the required stuff. See the list above. So that you have a better control of each installed Python package.

Configuration

Remove or better, rename the setup.py to setup.py_ORG if you want to make use of the production mode. Execute the start_pyguicms.py without an argument that define the type of environment and this will make use of the dev.cfg configuration file if there's no prod.cfg configuration file found. With the type of environment i mean the development or the production server. The development spawn some information to the console and is much more slower as the production environment. The development is intended for what this mean. Only people who is working on the code may need this environment. So that the code will be reloaded when some changes on the code has been made. As default, the dev.cfg configuration file will be used.

Edit the dev.cfg or prod.cfg file depending of your choice and read the comments in there. This configuration file is self explaining and should be not a problem to define the different options.

Setup the database

Once that everything is been setup, you may need to add the default data. The default data is the permissions, groups, users, pages, ... This is a required step!

If you make use of MySQL you may need to create the database by the hand and create a special user reserved for this database. Give that user only rights for the pyguicms database and don't user your root or administrator account of MySQL!

To put the default data into the database run the following script in the directory containing the pyguicms files:

python setup_db.py --verbose --mode=dev --start

The --mode=<environment> define the environment to setup. This is in most of the case a different database.

Deployment

The pyguicms should be run with various webserver. Actually, only informations for apache2 is provided. Don't hesitate to contact us if you have setup the pyguicms project on another webserver.

Using the build-in web server

This little webserver is able to handle around 1000 requests seconds. In the most cases, this build-in webserver is more as enough for some littler projects. Where there are not that much visitors at the same time.

Start the script as following:

./start_pyguicms.py

Or on Microsoft Windows operating systems:

python start_pyguicms.py

Apache2 web server

See the info on TurboGears.

The info come from here. Thank you very much for this info! It was pain in the ass to get my project running with [Apache] [Apache] without your tricks!

Install the required stuff:

aptitude install apache2
aptitude install libapache2-mod-proxy-html

Load the needed apache modules:

a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_http

Create a new file at:

/etc/apache2/conf.d/pyguicms

and put the following:

ProxyPreserveHost on
<Proxy *>
  Order allow,deny
  Allow from all
</Proxy>
 ProxyPass /pyguicms/ http://127.0.0.1:8080/pyguicms/
 ProxyPassReverse /pyguicms/ http://127.0.0.1:8080/pyguicms/
 ProxyPass /static/ http://127.0.0.1:8080/static/
 ProxyPassReverse /static/ http://127.0.0.1:8080/static/

Now, force the reload of the apache config:

/etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Start the pyguicms project:

./start_pyguicms.py

Lighttd web server

See the info on TurboGears.

...

Markup language

For the Pages, Articles, Links, Blog, Guestbook, you may use the python-markdown markup language. An easy markup language to give some formating to your text files. See the sandbox.

States of Articles, Links, Blogs, News, Pages

The state of an item determine the availability of it. This means that we could create some items that will be only viewable be members, ...

• Draft - Only members will see this item
• Private - Only admin people will see this item.
• Public Draft - The whole public will see this, with a warning of his state
• Published - The item is readable for everyon.
• Reviewing - The item is only viewable be members and needs to be approved.

Support

You can support us in various ways.

• Writing documentation for the project.
• Develop on the code etc.
• Donate us.

Todo

A link should be pointed to the TODO file. To avoid that we may maintain to much different versions of the TODO file. And we should only point to the latest version of the TODO file.

Donation

You may sponsor us project so that we may develop it as a full time job. Please contact us.

[Apache] : http://www.apache.org

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