Installing Habari 0.1.1 (finally)

Well, after the initial repository builds and a crappy 0.1 release, I have successfully been able to install Habari onto my server. Do I use it? No, but I do like to test out other software in my free time, heh. Seriously, though, installing Habari has been quite lame, and I’m happy to say that I have figured out how to get it installed on a server, with no error messages.

Background Information

First off, Habari is a new blogging software that is being highly-developed by former Wordpress user Chris Davis. Chris wrote a nice Wordpress plugin called CJD Notepad, that appears to not work anymore, but could just be my Wordpress install. I have heard that many of the Wordpress developers have gone with Chris and are trying to build the new and improved blogging software called Habari. On a side-note, I’m all Wordpress and it’s going to be extremely hard to get me to change over to another system. Wordpress is just too damn easy and configurable, while at the same time, easy to implement templates. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a Developer Release. In other words, it’s not suppose to be full of features and whatnot, it’s just suppose to work. So, I can’t really judge Habari based on a Developer Release, but if installing a small webapp keeps giving me troubles, then something is wrong.

Getting Habari

To actually obtain Habari, just go to the Google Code: Habari page and download the latest (in this case the only version, 0.1.1) version of Habari. If you are running Windows, select the .zip and if you are running Linux use the .tar.gz file. Save the file to an easy to remember location, mine is the Desktop. Now, we are ready to get this puppy on the web!

System Requirements

• web server (Apache2 and lighttpd tested)
• PHP version 5 or above
• PHP with PHP Data Objects (PDO) enabled
• A supported database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite)

Pre-Setup Steps

We are going to need to extract the .zip archive and move the files to the server via FTP. So, get out your favorite FTP client, in which mine is Filezilla. Connect to your host and upload all the files into a folder onto your server (e.g: /www/habari, where www is the root of your server). The files/folders that shoul be uploaded is doc, scripts, system, user, and index.php.

Next step will be database creation. Whether you use PHPMyAdmin or stright up command-line, you need to create a new database. For simplicity purposes, we will be using habari as the database name. The database create should be self-explainatory, especially if you have professional web hosting, such as Dreamhost. It makes it extremely easy to setup a new database.

In step 3 of the Habari documentation for installation, it states to edit the config.php.mysql file (if using MySQL for database) with your database connection information and then copying it to config.php, but that has never, ever worked for me. Every single time I do this, it shoots out tons of PHP errors. I have figured out a workaround. Do not edit this file, we are just going to let the install script to the work for us. I presume that you have already uploaded the files from above into the root of your website in a folder called habari, if so, go to the url http://yourdomain.tld/habari/ (where yourdomain.tld is your domain and habari is actually where you have put the folder for the installation). Since the database is not configured, Habari automatically redirects you to the installation file to install Habari.

Installing Habari

Next comes the fun part, actually installing Habari. There are several options that you must fill in to complete the installation, the first being for Database Setup:

• Database Type: MySQL (we are using MySQL in the scope of this article)
• Database Host: localhost (usually it’s localhost, but some hosts have their own dedicated database server)
• Username: [name] (database username for database)
• Password: [password] (password for database user from above)
• Database Name: habari (name of the database, in this case habari)
• Table Prefix: [prefix] (just a table delimiter, use the default unless you know you are going to have several installations on the same database)

Next we need to configure the Site Configuration:

• Site Name: [site-name] (title of your blog)
• Username: [username] (this will be the username you login to Habari as administrative user)
• Password: [password] (password for the administrative user)
• Password (again): [password] (retype the password)
• Admin Email: [email] (email for the administrator user, for password retrieval, etc)

Next, you should be able to click Install and all should go well.

Logging in for the first time

Congrats on your install of Habari! Now, how do we login? On the homepage of your new installation (should be the root of where you installed Habari), there should be two text boxes, username and password. Enter your username and password that you typed in for the administrative users in the installation. This should bring you to the Admin Panel. I’m not going into this, as this is self-explainatory. This build of Habari is a Developer Release, as stated above, in which there is not much here. The basic post and categories are here and a few plugins. I’ve sure when it is finally realized there will be a little more here. Until then, you should just play around with it if you would like. Below are some screenshots I took of the admin panel. Also, if you have any issues or questeions, please feel free to comment and I will do my best in assisting you.

Screenshots