In the upcoming release of Syntax, I've started to address the difficulty associated with getting an instance installed and up and running from the archive file. It's still doesn't work straight out-of-the-box but the new installation tests will save you hours chasing obscure and frustrating bugs. Some features, such as file uploading and Smarty templates, depend on the web server process being able to write, or outright own, specific directories. Because of that, we'll probably never get to a point where Syntax will work without some setup time.

Once you have extracted the Syntax files and setup your webserver to make the public directory available over http, you can access the installation tests at admin/testing/. The testing script goes through a handful of php scripts that output settings and test the connection settings to your Syntax CMS database, check ownsership of key directories, and checks that necessary symbolic links exist. Where possible, the script will try to correct any errors by itself but if it cannot, it shows the exact commands you need to execute to fix anything. The screenshot below is an example of output with an error found.

This was previously mentioned installation tests when I checked the instalation tests into CVS.

I added another out-of-the-box feature into CVS today. It's a module that automatically builds a sitemap based on the sections you create for content. The output is simply unstyle, nested lists inside of a div with an id named, cleverly, "sitemap". You can use CSS selectors to customize the output of the template. You can also write your own display template to tweak the layout to your liking. This will be part of the next release, which should be real-soon-now.

An example of the sitemap module, with a few added bells and whistles.

I've just checked in to cvs a suite of testing scripts that check to verify that you're Syntax site is setup correctly. At Forum One, we've had an internal deployment script to use for setting up a new site. But if you're installing Syntax on a foreign server, you've had to hope that the planets are correctly aligned, that you've followed the installation instructions correctly, and that we didn't leave out a critical installation step. This script, which I've placed in the public/admin/testing directory checks the following:

• availability of smarty and Adodb.
• connection to the database specified in config/db.conf.php.
• Syntax framework initialization
• critical directories are writeable by the web server

This will be a part of the next Syntax release but until then you can check out the module ( syntax-cms/src/public/admin/testing ) from CVS on tigris.