Installing on Ubuntu

Installing Campsite on Ubuntu is fairly easy, provided you follow the right steps. Here is what you need to do to install Campsite on Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala:"

Configure Apache: create an Apache virtual host (optional)

In this case, there are other web apps on the install, so we will put the Campsite install directory in /var/www/localcampsite.

cd /var/www/

and

mkdir localcampsite

The first step was to remove the existing localhost symbolic link which comes pre-installed with Apache:

sudo rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

Set up the virtual host in apache so that it knows to look in our /localcampsite directory by creating a file named localcampsite in /etc/apache2/sites-available:

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available

 and then:

sudo gedit localcampsite

Copy and paste this text into the document (if you're using nano you can paste by using the right click):

NameVirtualHost localhost
<VirtualHost localhost>
     DocumentRoot /var/www/localcampsite
#"localcampsite" can be whatever you want to name your directory
     ServerName localcampsite
#   ServerAlias [site_alias]
     DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
  <Directory /var/www/localcampsite>
     Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
     AllowOverride All
     <IfModule mod_access>
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from all
     </IfModule>
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
  

Save and close.

We need to create a symbolic link between sites available and sites enabled:

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/localcampsite /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

Whenever  you make changes to Apache, you have to restart it:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Setup your php.ini file

You will need to adjust values in your php.ini file in order for Campsite to work properly. On Debian and Ubuntu systems, your "php.ini" file is usually located in "/etc/php5/apache2" directory.

cd /etc/php5/apache2

and then

sudo gedit php.ini

The php.ini file has a lot of different settings. You can use your text editor's "find" function to jump directly to each of these. The following directives show what the values should be for each variable in the php.ini file.

Always turn off register_globals because it's a big security hole:
register_globals = Off

Find the "memory_limit" directive and set the amount of memory to at least 32MB:
memory_limit = 32M   

Set maximum size of POST data that PHP will accept to a hig value:
post_max_size = 100M 

Turn off magic quotes:
magic_quotes_gpc = Off

Allow HTTP file uploads:
file_uploads = On

Set the maximum allowed size for uploaded files to a large value so you will be able to upload large attachments:
upload_max_filesize = 100M

Make sure the following extensions are enabled (they are enabled as long the line appears in the php.ini file, and the line does not start with a semi-colon (';')):
extension=gd.so
extension=mysqli.so
extension=mysql.so

Downloading Campsite

The easiest way to download Campsite for free is to go to our Sourceforge page and download the files direct from there. Although there are Debian packages available, in this case it's just as easy to use the source files.

Once they're downloaded, unarchive the file using this command:

tar xzvf /path/to/your/downloaded/file/<Campsite_source>

 This will create a directory called "campsite." Enter that directory:

cd campsite

6. Copy the content of implementation/site directory into the document root directory of the apache virtual host:

sudo cp -a <path to local campsite/implementatation/site> /var/www/localcampsite

Note that your command cannot have a trailing slash. It's ok to have "localcampsite" instead of having these files in the www root directory. But because we do, we have an additional step of setting up the virtual host.

Change the ownership of everything in the campsite directory file to be www-data:

cd /var/www/localcampsite

and then:

chown -R www-data *

Start a browser, point it to the http://localhost URL and follow the steps in the web page, and you're done!