I'll be documenting how to setup a Syntax CMS site and use it to build a simple blogging site. This post will focus on getting the framework up and running and future posts will be about setting up content types (data objects) to publish a blog. Some of this post is duplicative of the INSTALL intructions bundled with Syntax and I will not be going through all the details of setting everything up. Instead, I'll be trying to provide a practical look at what it takes to install and troubleshoot a new instance.

Web and Database setup

Of course, you'll need to have PHP4, Mysql and a webserver already setup before you proceed. We'll assume you have setup your apache server or a vrtual host that serves requests from directory called /var/www/htdocs/my_blog/public. You should also have downloaded the latest . Syntax CMS release 1.2.1.Extract the archive into the directory /var/www/htdocs/my_blog. Note that it will create both a private/ and public/ directory under my_blog. Syntax CMS is setup to keep configuration files, PHP libraries and classes, and any other code out of your document root. The public directory contains anything your site visitors will need to view your site - images, css, javascript, as well as the web-based Content Adminsitration application and developer tools.

The next step is to create our database and a user. From the mysql command line:

create database myblog;
grant all on myblog.* to myblogdb@localhost identified by 'secret';

You'll need to update the database connection parameters in private/config/db.conf.php to match the database name, host, user, and password used above. Next, from your my_blog directory, dump the database file to create and populate the necessary database tables:

mysql myblog < dump.sql

Testing and Troubleshooting

If you're web server and database are setup correctly, you can check your syntax settings by requesting the /admin/testing URL in your browser. You should see a page similar to the screenshot below. This script tests various components of the framework to make sure they are configured correctly. Pay attention to the boxes in red, they'll indicate something that is not set correctly and provide the fix for them.

Once you've quashed any warnings you have from the testing script, you're ready to start customizing Syntax CMS to behave like a blog. There is enough out-of-the-box functionality that at this point you could use it to serve up a basic website after customizing the section, header, and footer templates to match the look you want, but that is not the point of this overview.

In our next part, we'll look at Content Types - what they are and how to define them.

We came across an odd mod_rewrite behavior today that is worth documenting. Some of the code uses the environment variables SCRIPT_URI and SCRIPT_URL, which are supposed to be registerd by mod_rewrite. However, if you use the "RewriteEngine on" directive in .htaccess to enable rewrites but don't have a similar line in your apache configuration or vhost configuration block, rewrites will work but those variables will not be set.