PLEASE READ *ALL* OF THIS DOCUMENT BEFORE INSTALLING OR USING POSTNUKE

PostNuke: The Platinum Release (0.7.6.1)
=======================================

PostNuke is an Open Source, open-development content management system
(CMS).  PostNuke started as a fork from PHP-Nuke (http://www.phpnuke.org) and
provides many enhancements and improvements over the PHP-Nuke system. PostNuke
is still undergoing development, but a large number of core functions are now
stabilizing and a complete API for third-party developers is now implemented.

If you would like to help develop this software, please visit our home page
at http://noc.postnuke.com/

Or visit the community forums at:
http://forums.postnuke.com/


New Installation
================

PostNuke has a user-friendly installer that divides the process of setting-up your 
site into a simple set of steps. 

Before running the installer, ensure that both config.php and config-old.php
are world-writable. Furthermore, make sure that the pnTemp directory and its subdirectories 
are also world-writable. "World-writable" means applying a permission setting of 777 or 666, 
depending on your system, if the system is Unix-based.

To install your PostNuke system, run install.php from your browser to start
the installation process. The exact URL you need to enter depends on your site but, 
for example, if your site is www.example.com and PostNuke is installed in the 'sampledir' directory,
then the URL will be:

http://www.example.com/sampledir/install.php

Follow the instructions in the installation script and, when prompted to choose between
either a new installation or an upgrade, select 'new install'. The installer will
create the required database tables and prompt you to enter the user name and password
for the site administrator's account. Once you have completed the installation process,
you should be able to start using your PostNuke site immediately.

Note: To avoid problems, it is preferable to create the database before running the
installer, because the installation script often does not have the required permissions 
in MySQL to create the database. However, should you wish to create the database using
the installer, ensure your MySQL user has full rights to create new databases.

For security reasons, we recommend you to have magic_quotes set to ON and register_globals
set to OFF in php.ini, although PostNuke will work regardless of these settings.

ADDENDUM: Should you wish to install PostNuke manually, which is not recommended,
import the MySQL dump included in the distribution into your database, and edit config.php
manually in a text editor. If you choose this method, the administrator's  
user name will be "Admin", and the administrator's password will be "Password".  
These are case-sensitive. Remember to change the default administrator account user 
name and password, or you will leave your system open to attacks.


Upgrade
=======

The simple upgrade script allows you to quickly upgrade any previous PostNuke 
installation (version 0.71 or later) to 0.761. In addition, you can upgrade from 
other CMS packages.


1) Before doing anything else, BACK UP YOUR DATABASE AND FILES. This cannot be 
stressed enough. If there is a problem with your upgrade procedure, or if the process
is only partly completed, the best solution is often to restore your original site  
and try again. Without a backup, this isn't possible.

*IMPORTANT WARNING* DO NOT ATTEMPT TO START THE UPGRADE PROCESS UNTIL YOU HAVE 
COMPLETED STEPS 2) AND 3) BELOW!!!!!

2) Log in to your site using your administrator user name and password. 
Make sure that all the modules listed below are initialized, and that they are active.
state. This step is vital when upgrading to 0.761, because a number of core  
modules (notably Admin, Blocks and Modules) will be upgraded in this release, and must 
be initialized and active for the upgrade process to be successful. These modules
are as follows:

AddStory (NS-AddStory)
Admin (or NS-Admin)
Admin_Messages (or NS-Admin_Messages)
Blocks
Censor
Groups (or NS-Groups)
Header_Footer
legal
LostPassword (or NS-LostPassword)
Mailer
Multisites (or NS-Multisites)
NewUser (or NS-NewUser)
Permissions
pnRender
Search
Settings (or NS-Settings)
Submit_News
User (or NS-User)
Xanthia
Your_Account (or NS-Your_Account)

3) Ensure that your default site theme and the theme selected for your site 
administrator (if you have allowed users to choose their own theme) are set to 
ExtraLite. The Xanthia module is upgraded in this build, and it is necessary for 
your site to be using a non-Xanthia theme beforehand: if not, you will have problems 
accessing your site afterwards. ExtraLite is the only non-Xanthia theme included 
in the PostNuke distribution. (Note: if you DO fail to do this, the PostNuke Swiss
Army Knife [PSAK] tool can be used to restore your site to a visitable condition.)

4) Take a copy of your config.php file and store it somewhere safe;
you'll need it in step 7.

5) If you're upgrading from an earlier release containing the Xanthia and pnRender 
modules, ensure that all cache and compile directories in pnTemp are emptied.

6) If you haven't already done so, BACKUP your old files and database to a 
secure location. Remove ALL of the files in your existing PostNuke distribution.  
ALL of them. Put your new distribution in its place. 
If you had 3rd party modules and/or blocks installed, copy them from your backup 
into your new installation NOW, *before* continuing the upgrade process.

7) Take the config.php file that you saved in step 4, and copy
it to the PostNuke base directory (the directory in which the config.php and 
config-old.php files are located). It will be used in the upgrade process

Also during this step 7), make sure you set permissions for the config-old.php
and config.php files to 777 or 666, depending on your system. 

This is necessary in order to allow PHP to update these files. Once the installation 
process has been completed, change the permissions back to 644.

8) If you are upgrading from a PostNuke version earlier than 0.750, there are also 
several new entries that need to be added to your config.php file. 
Add the following entries, just below $pnconfig['encoded']

$pnconfig['dbtabletype'] = 'MyISAM';
$pnconfig['pconnect'] = '0';
$pnconfig['temp'] = 'pnTemp';

Now, add the following entry, just below $pndebug['debug_sql'] = 0;

$pndebug['pagerendertime'] = 0;

9) The next step to follow depends on the version you are upgrading from. If your 
current PostNuke version is earlier than 0.723, proceed with step 10.  
Otherwise, skip to step 11.

10) *IMPORTANT* THE STEP BELOW IS ONLY TO BE FOLLOWED IF UPGRADING FROM A VERSION 
EARLIER THAN 0.723

Run install.php from your browser, to start the installation process. The exact URL 
depends on your site; for example:

http://www.example.com/sampledir/install.php

Follow the instructions given by the installation script and, when prompted to choose 
between either a new installation or an upgrade, select 'Upgrade'. Then choose the version 
of PostNuke (or other CMS) that you are currently using. The rest of the procedure 
should be automatic.

11) Now invoke upgrade.php from your browser, as an example:

http://www.example.com/sampledir/upgrade.php

You will need to enter a user name and password for a user with site administrator rights.
The upgrade script will then perform the upgrade for you. Once the process is finished, 
you can click on the link to visit your now-upgraded site.

Remove install.php, remove the 'install' directory and remove upgrade.php from your 
web site's base directory, as these files are no longer required by PostNuke but will  
create a security risk if left in place.

11) The new Admin module allows you to categorize modules. 
During an upgrade, categories are created but are not populated. So all modules 
will be placed in the 3rd-party category. Modify the configuration of the Admin module, 
and add each module to a category you feel is suitable. 
In the Admin module's configuration panel, you can also define new categories and 
remove unwanted categories.

12) If you want to use a Xanthia theme and enable short URLs for your site, then 
your web site's .htaccess file will need to be updated so that it contains the simplified 
URLs in this release. 
We have provided .htaccess files for the various short URL schemes in the directory  
/modules/Xanthia/pndocs/short_urls. If you made any changes to the .htaccess file you 
were using with your existing PostNuke installation, then you will need to merge those 
changes into the new file we have provided.

Caution
=======

Previous versions of PostNuke and other derivatives often include plugins
that alter the database core tables, by adding fields, changing names, etc.
It should be noted that PostNuke does not support any modification of the core
tables (namely those that come with this PostNuke distribution) or direct access to
the core database tables. APIs are provided for developers to use for these
purposes, so that future planned changes will have a minimal impact on
third-party added functionality; the APIs we provide should be used at all times.


Common Installation Errors
==========================

Below are some common errors and frequent mistakes: 

1) config.php and config-old.php not world-writable: these files need to be
writable by the web server process during the install/upgrade, so that 
certain configuration parameters can be stored. The installation procedure should 
check for this and inform you if the files are not writable. Note that these files 
can be reset to read-only once the installation/upgrade process has been completed.

2) Problems creating or populating the database: this is often due to incorrect MySQL 
privileges for access to the database. If you are not sure that the installer has 
the necessary permissions, try to access your MySQL database "manually" (using a tool 
such as phpMyAdmin, for example) using the database user name and password that you 
intended the PostNuke installer to use, and attempt to create a database and to create 
a table in that database; if you succeed, you will have ensured that the user exists, 
has a correct password, and is able to carry out the operations that PostNuke needs to
perform in order to complete the installation process.


Enjoy!
Cheers!

The PostNuke Development Team
