Installation on Windows

This is a detailed guide to get a working selfoss installation using Apache server & MySQL (WAMP server) with Windows 7 as the host OS. These steps can be used as guidance for installation in other Windows versions.

NOTE: If you're comfortable doing the windows equivalent of steps 1-4 provided on this page: http://selfoss.aditu.de/, feel free to skip directly to step 9.

1. Click the download selfoss button on the selfoss home page:

(Below the fancy box icon)

http://selfoss.aditu.de/

2. Extract the zipped folder using some unzip utility such as WinZip

Right Click on the zipped folder (selfoss v2.1.3)-> Extract here

3. Copy the newly extracted folder 'selfoss' and paste it into the www directory (web directory) of your WAMP server

4. Find and rename all the .htaccess files into htaccess (remove the dot)

5. Make the following folders writeable:

data/cache,
data/favicons,
data/logs,
data/thumbnails,
data/sqlite
public/

Tip: If you don't have write permissions,

Right click on folder -> Properties -> Security tab -> Edit permissions

6. Create a copy of file called defaults (extension is .ini) and rename it to config and make the following changes: (config.ini will override default.ini)

• Change DB type to mysql
• Set db_username and db_password as per your MySQL console configuration.

e.g.

[globals]
db_type=mysql
db_host=localhost
db_database=selfoss
db_username=root
db_password=
db_port=3306

** Note: Do not delete the [globals] line.**

7. In mysql the database selfoss will not be automatically created.

• Go to MySQL console
• Use the command

create database selfoss;

** Note: Database will be automatically populated **

8. Now you will need to create the windows equivalent of cronjob in linux.

Windows equivalent of linux terminologies:

cronjob - scheduled task
crontab - A program which triggers the cronjob. Here we are using a batch file

To update the feeds,

Start by adding the path for php:

• Click Start
• Right Click Computer –> Properties
• Click Advanced system settings
• Click Environment variables
• Go to the end of the path (it ends with a semicolon) Add the path where php is installed & don't forget to end with a semicolon.

e.g. C:\wamp\bin\php\php5.5.12;

9. Next create a batch file: (This is our windows equivalent of crontab)

• Open up a new file in a text editor, such as notepad.

Enter the following line:

start “URL of your webserver”/update

e.g. start localhost/www/selfoss v2.1.3/update

10. Go to Windows Task Scheduler.

• Right click on Computer-> Manage
• In System Tools, Expand Task Scheduler and Click on Task Scheduler Library
• Click on create task button on Actions pane on right hand side
• Give a name for the task
• Go to triggers tab and select daily under settings tab. Under Advanced settings, select the "repeat task every" check box and choose every 5 minutes and for a duration of indefinitely
• Next, go to actions tab and click on browse. In that give the path for the batch file that you created earlier.
• Click Ok
• Right click on scheduled task-> Run

Your feeds will be updated every 5 minutes.

Some important notes:

1. Check the apache server error log for any errors. On your WAMP server, go to

WAMP server->apache->error log

2. .htaccess file will be hidden by default in Windows. Find and rename all three .htaccess files to htaccess (remove the dot)

3. If you are getting an error saying "no database called selfoss", then you have not created a database with name selfoss. Check that a database with name selfoss has been created in MySQL. The database will be automatically populated, but should be manually created

4. If you are having trouble rendering the graphics on the web page, then a workaround in Windows is to copy the files inside public folder (containing css, font etc) to the www directory/ web directory of your WAMP installation.