/README.markdown
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- Ushahidi Platform
- =================
- The Ushahidi Platform is an open source web application for information collection, vizualisation and interactive
- mapping. It allows people to collect and share their own stories using various mediums such
- as SMS, Web Forms, Email or Twitter. For more information about the platform and use cases (case studies) visit: http://www.ushahidi.com
- System Requirements
- -------------------
- To install the platform on your computer/server, the target system must meet the following requirements:
- * PHP version 5.2.3 or greater
- * MySQL version 5.0 or greater
- * An HTTP Server. Kohana, which Ushahidi is built on, is known to work with the following web servers:
- - Apache 1.3+
- - Apache2.0+
- - lighttpd
- - Microsoft Internet Information Server (MS IIS)
- * Unicode support in the operating system
- Required Extensions
- -------------------
- The follwing is a list of PHP extensions that must be installed on your server in order for Ushahidi to run properly:
- * PCRE (http://php.net/pcre) must be compiled with –enable-utf8 and –enable-unicode-properties for UTF-8 functions to work properly.
- * iconv (http://php.net/iconv) is required for UTF-8 transliteration.
- * mcrypt (http://php.net/mcrypt) is required for encryption.
- * SPL (http://php.net/spl) is required for several core libraries
- * mbstring (http://php.net/mbstring) which speeds up Kohana's UTF-8 functions.
- * cURL (http://php.net/curl) which is used to access remote sites.
- * MySQL (http://php.net/mysql) is required for database access.
- #####NOTE: Need to figure out what extensions you already have installed on your server? Here are instructions to do just that: http://jontangerine.com/silo/php/phpinfo/
- Optional Server Requirements
- ----------------------------
- * To use Ushahidi's "Clean URLS" feature on an Apache Web Server, you will need the mod_rewrite module
- and the ability to use local .htaccess files. To check if local .htaccess files are allowed, verify that the
- "AllowOverride" directive in your Apache config (for the web server directory in which you have installed Ushahidi)
- has been set to "All" i.e.:
- <Directory [your-document-root-directory]>
- ...
- AllowOverride All
- ...
- </Directory>
- #####NOTE: Clean URLs means that the URLs of your deployment will not have the 'index.php' prefix
- Installation
- ------------
- * ####Download and extract Ushahidi
- You can obtain the official release of the software from [the download site](http://download.ushahidi.com).
- Alternatively, you can obtain the release running the latest version of the from [GitHub](https://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Web/archives/master) - the files are available in .zip and .tar.gz
-
- To unzip/extract the archive on a typical Unix/Linux command line:
-
- tar -xvf Ushahidi_Web-xxxx.tar.gz
-
- or in the case of a zip file:
- unzip Ushahidi_Web-xxxx.zip
-
- This will create a new directory Ushahidi_Web-xxxx containing all the Ushahidi platform files and directories - Move the contents of this directory
- into a directory within your webserver's document root or your public HTML directory.
- * ####Ensure the following directories are writable (i.e. have their permission values set to 777)
- - application/config/config.php
- - application/config
- - application/cache
- - application/logs
- - media/uploads
- - .htaccess
-
- On Unix/Linux, you can change the permissions as follows:
- cd path-to-webserver-document-root-directory
- chmod -R 777 application/config
- chmod -R 777 application/cache
- chmod -R 777 application/logs
- chmod -R 777 media/uploads
- chmod 777 .htaccess
-
- #####NOTE: The process of configuring file permissions is different for various operating systems. Here are some helpful links about permissions for the Windows (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308419) and Unix (http://www.washington.edu/computing/unix/permissions.html) operating systems.
- * ####Create the Ushahidi database
- Ushahidi stores all its information in a database. You must therefore create this database in order to install Ushahidi. This is done as follows:
-
- mysqladmin -u 'username' -p create 'databasename'
-
- MySQL will prompt for the password for the <username> database password and then create the initial database files. Next, you must log in and set the
- database access rights:
-
- mysql -u 'username' -p
-
- Again, you will be prompted for the 'username' database password. At the MySQL prompt, enter the following command:
-
- GRANT SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, CREATE, DROP, ALTER, INDEX on 'databasename'.*
- TO 'username'@'localhost' IDENFIFIED BY 'password';
-
- Where:
- - 'databasename' is the name of your database
- - 'username@localhost' is the name of your MySQL account
- - 'password' is the password required for that username
- #####NOTE: Your account must have all the privileges listed above in order to run Ushahidi on your webserver.
- * ####Run the install script
- To run the install script, point your browser to the base url of your website: (e.g. http://www.example.com).
-
- You will be guided through a series of screens to set up the database and site settings depending on the installation method you choose (Basic or Advanced)
- Additional Information
- ----------------------
- For further references and documentation, head over to our wiki (http://wiki.ushahidi.com/doku.php?id=how_to_use_ushahidi_alpha). Also, we encourage you to drop by our forums (http://forums.ushahidi.com/) if you have any additional questions or concerns.