Beast Forum Installation (Dedicated cPanel server)
Posted by Miraenda Thu, 14 Sep 2006 20:01:00 GMT
This version of Beast forum requires Ruby, Rails and FastCGI with MySQL 4.1 series. If your dedicated server does not already have Ruby and Rails installed on it, you can contact dedicated@lunarpages.com to request an installation. Please provide the last 4 digits of your card on file for ownership confirmation along with your dedicated server domain name or account username. Managed addon customers have 1 free script installation available to them. Non-managed addon customers would pay $75 per hour for the script. Ruby and Rails with FastCGI support takes approximately 1 hour to install.
A. Beast forum requires redcloth gem. This gem can be installed by the following in shell if you do not already have it:
gem install redcloth
B. Creating your database for Beast forum:
- Log into cPanel and click on MySQL Databases icon:
- As per the example below, enter forum in the "New Database" field under Current Databases area, then click "Create Database" button. Your full database name will then show as cPaneluser_forum.
- Under Current Users area as seen in the example below, enter forum for the "Username" field and enter a password that you write in your notes for the "Password" field, then click "Create User" button. Your full database user's name will then show as cPaneluser_forum.
- Under Add Users to Your Database area as shown below, select in the "User" dropdown cPaneluser_forum and select in the "Database" dropdown cPaneluser_forum, then click "Add User to Database" button.
C. Installing Beast forum:
cd /home/user
svn checkout http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/beast/trunk forum
cd forum
rake freeze_edge
Please replace user with your cPanel username whenever user is noted.
D. Edit dispatch.fcgi to fix path to Ruby:
cd /home/user/forum/public
vi dispatch.fcgi
Change the top variable:
#!/opt/usr/bin/ruby
to
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby
Save the file, then check the file has 755 file permissions:
ls -l
chmod 755 dispatch.fcgi
E. Ensure .htaccess has right dispatch.fcgi entry:
vi .htaccess
Change:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.cgi [QSA,L]
to
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [QSA,L]
Save the file.
F. Edit dispatch.rb file to fix path to Ruby:
cd /home/user/forum/public
vi dispatch.rb
Change the top variable:
#!/opt/usr/bin/ruby
to
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby
Save the file.
G. Copying the database.example.yml and editing the database.yml file:
cd /home/user/forum/config
cp database.example.yml database.yml
vi database.yml
Replace whatever it has with the following (the 2 spaces to the left of some of the lines are spaces not tabs, so do not change them to tabs):
production: database: user_forum adapter: mysql host: 127.0.0.1 username: user_forum password: mydbuserpass
Change user to your cPanel username for lines 2 & 5, then change dbuserpass to have your database user's password (the one you entered in Section B, Step 3).
Save the file.
H. Change environment.rb to have the forum in production:
cd /home/user/forum/config
vi environment.rb
Change the following:
#ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'production'
to
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] ||= 'production'
Save the file.
I. Symlink the directories (if you will be using Beast forum at http://domain.com):
cd /home/user
mv public_html public_html.bak
ln -s /home/user/forum/public public_html
mkdir public_html/cgi-bin
chown -R user:user /home/user/forum
chmod 755 /home/user/forum && chmod 755 /home/user/forum/public
If you will be using Beast forum at http://domain.com/folder/, do the following instead:
cd /home/user/public_html
ln -s ../forum/public folder
chown -R user:user /home/user/forum
J. Import the database schema:
cd /home/user/forum
rake db:schema:load RAILS_ENV=production
K. Beast forum should now be working
- Go to your domain (either http://domain.com/ or http://domain.com/folder/ depending on which you chose in Section I), and Beast forum should be working.
- If Beast forum is not working, your app might be cached, so restart apache:
/etc/init.d/httpd stop
killall -9 httpd
/etc/init.d/httpd startssl - You can now sign up to the forum as the first signup automatically becomes the admin. You will be told you are sent an email, but I've found that this first account (the admin one) doesn't receive any activation email. Other signups (after the first one) should receive an email to activate the account before being able to log into it.
You can see an example of Beast forum at miraenda.com.
