Installation

Installing DotComBLITZ

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR UPGRADES:

If you are upgrading from a previous version, please read the upgrading instructions >>

Requirements:

• A Web server with PHP 4 or higher. We recommend Apache on Linux.
• MySQL 3.23 or higher.

Installing DotComBLITZ is easy like a walk in the park. Just follow the easy steps shown below and you should be up and running in no time.

• Unpack the DotComBLITZ archive in a directory of your choice on your web server. To reduce clutter, DCB will only create a file index.php and a directory dcb. Everything that belongs to DotComBlitz you will find under the dcb directory.

• Make the config.php file world writable (e.g. "chmod 666" on Linux/Unix) and make the log and cache directories world writable (e.g. "chmod 777" on Linux/Unix).
  NOTE: The config.php file contains only a small number of configuration variables, e.g. admin login and database connection information. After they are properly configured and you don't need to change them, you can restrict the permissions to the file (e.g. "chmod 644"). The rest of the DCB settings are stored in the database.

• Write your license key in the LICENSE_KEY file.

• Login with the default administrative account (user name: admin, password: admin) and click on the Administration link in order to access the administrative interface, where you define the MySQL server connection info, create the database structure and specify the configuration settings which are specific to your installation.

  Note: You are STRONGLY encouraged to set a new login name and password for the administrative account.

• If you plan to use paid user accounts, go to Subscriptions Administration sections to define subscription types and to specify to what modules the unregistered users will have access to.

We told you it's very easy!

Of course, we can also offer installation services for you if you prefer to. Just contact us.

Domains Monitor and RankFinder crontab setup - optional

If you are using the Domains Monitor or if you purchased the RankFinder module (either stand-alone or as part of DotComBLITZ), we recommend you to also do this step.

Since Domains Monitor and RankFinder are ment to run continously on your server, you will need a mechanism which allows them to resume operations after a server reboot. For this you will setup a crontab task which will regularily check if they are running, by using the lynx or links utilities (depending on which one is available on your system).

To do this, simply define in your crontab a task like the one below:

lynx -dump <www.yourserver.com>/<dotcomblitz>/dcb/cron/cron.php > /dev/null

Of course, you will replace <www.yourserver.com> with the actual name of your server and <dotcomblitz> with your actual path to your DotComBLITZ/RankFinder installation.

You can safely set this task to be run every minute from crontab, since it doesn't consume many resources.

If your server uses links instead of lynx, replace accordingly the command name.

Keywords Monitor crontab setup

If you are using the Keywords Monitor module, then you MUST setup a cron task which will do the daily checking and e-mailing of results to the users.

The procedure is similar with the one described above, the command being:

lynx -dump <www.yourserver.com>/<dotcomblitz>/dcb/cron/cron_keywordsmon.php > /dev/null

You should set this task to run once a day, at an hour of your choice.

Customizing DotComBLITZ

Customizing the interface of DotComBLITZ is also very easy and doesn't require programming knowledge.

The templates and static pages are located in the modules_templates and static_pages directories respectively under the dcb directory. The system uses the powerful and intuitive templates engine Smarty.

To customize the general look & feel of your site, simply update the files header.html, footer.html and main.css with the design of your choice.

Furthermore, note that in modules_templates you also have header and footer files for:

• Pop-up windows: header_limited.html and footer_limited.html
• E-mails: There are two sets of files, one for the plain text version (msg_footer.text.tpl, msg_footer.text.tpl) and one for the HTML emails (msg_header.html.tpl, msg_footer.html.tpl).

Then, for customizing the interface of the individual modules, simply update the template files under the modules_templates directory. Where relevant, you will also find in the modules templates directories files called strings.ini, which contain messages (e.g. error messages) and e-mail subjects which you can also customize.

And, not in the least, note that in the main administrative page you can even change the display name of the system from DotComBLITZ to your own site name.