Installation Documentation

ScareCrow Message Board Installation Documentation

Welcome!  This document is meant to help guide you through the installation
of the ScareCrow Message Board Software.

Before you begin, you need to download a version of ScareCrow.  Head to
http://scarecrow.sourceforge.net/downloads.php
and select the version that best suits your needs.  Once the download has
completed, you need to uncompress the archive.

Uncompressing

Windows - Self Extracting

To extract the file if you downloaded the self-extracting version, simply
browse to the folder you saved it in and double-click.

Windows - Zip

To extract the zip file, you have two options.  If you have WinZip or a similar Windows archiving
utility, you can simply browse to where you downloaded the file, right-click
it and choose "Extract".

Alternately, if you have pkunzip for DOS, simply drop to a DOS shell, and execute the
following commands:

cd\path\to\archive

pkunzip archive_filename.zip

*Nix - Tar.gz

cd /path/to/archive

tar xzvf archive_filename.tar.gz

Where path\to\archive is the full system path to
the directory in which the archive resides, and archive_filename.zip is the name of the archive you
downloaded, for instance "scarecrow200-beta.zip".


Once you have extracted the files, you are ready to begin with the
installation.  If you do not have an FTP client, you will need one.  You can
find many good freeware or shareware FTP clients at http://www.tucows.com.  Make sure that the
FTP client you get is capable of performing the CHMOD operation.  CuteFTP is
a good client to use.  This tutorial will provide instructions for
performing commands within CuteFTP.  Other FTP clients should perform
similarly.

Open up your FTP client and connect to your FTP site with your usual
username and password.  Locate the cgi-bin directory.  This directory
is sometimes located underneath your web root (the htdocs, html, or
public_html directory) or sometimes right within it.  If it does not exist, create it
in your web root and do a CHMOD 755 cgi-bin.  In
CuteFTP, you can do that by right-clicking the directory, choosing CHMOD,
and typing 755 in the box at the bottom.  If your FTP client does not allow
you to specify a string such as 755, the permissions should be user: read, write, execute.  group: read, execute.  world:
read, execute.

Next, you will want to create the rest of your directories.  If your cgi-bin
was not in your web root, change the directory into your web root now.
Create a directory called scarecrow and enter that directory.  Next,
create four directories within the scarecrow directory:
images, avatars, emoticons and uploads.  Perform
the CHMOD 777 (user: read,
write, execute.  group: read, write, execute.  world: read, write,
execute) operation on each of the four directories as outlined above.

Enter your cgi-bin directory once again.  Here you should create a subdirectory.  This
tutorial will assume you have named it scarecrow, but you may name it
as you please.  Perform the CHMOD 755 operation on
the new directory.

In your FTP client, browse to the directory where you uncompressed the
ScareCrow archive.  There should be two directories and an assortment of
files.  Enter the cgi-bin directory and upload all files in that
directory to your cgi-bin.  CHMOD 755 all of the
newly uploaded files.  Also create three directories: data,
help, and templates.  Upload the contents of each respective
directory on your drive into the corresponding directory on your server:
data files to data, help files into help, and template files into templates.

Go back to the scarecrow directory you created in your web root
earlier.  In your FTP client, leave the cgi-bin directory and enter the
noncgi directory on your harddrive, where you extracted the ScareCrow
archive.  Upload each of the directories under noncgi into the corresponding
directory on your FTP server: All of the files in images to images, the
files in emoticons into emoticons, etc.  When the uploads are complete,
perform a CHMOD 644 on every file you have uploaded.

Are you still with us?  Congratulations!  You're half way through the
installation process.

Installer.cgi Script

The next step in the installation process is to point your web browser to
the installer.cgi script, http://yoursite.com/cgi-bin/scarecrow/installer.cgi,
where yoursite.com is the name of your website (and scarecrow
is the name of the directory you created within your cgi-bin, if you did not
follow the tutorial's example).

The first screen you will encounter is the most crucial.  The fields it
expects, and their explanations, are as follows:

Message Board Name - What you want to name your message board.  This
can be any string you wish.

Website Name - The name of the website on which the board resides.

Default Table Width (pixels or %) - The size of the table.  If you
have ever done any web design work, you know precisely what this is.  If
not, use a percent.  The percent (60%, for example), refers to how much of
the screen, horizontally, will be used.  The default is a fairly attractive
option.

Default User Group - The group that users are assigned to by default.
Be careful!  Users get their permissions from the groups they are assigned
to.  If you supply a faulty group, users will not be able to read or post on
the message board!  This may be any group name, but we recommend "Users".
Remember to create the group you specify here in the group manager in the
setup step!

CGI Path - This is by far the most important variable you will set.
If you set it improperly, your board will not function at all (in which case
you will need to re-run the installer.cgi script and change the value until
you have the correct value entered).  This variable specifies the full
system path to the directory you placed the ScareCrow CGI files in.  If
you are unsure of the full system path, simply accept the best-guess default
provided by the script.

Non-CGI Path - This is the full system path to the directory
in which you uploaded your images, emoticons and avatars.  It should be
similar to the CGI Path, except that instead of entering
cgi-bin/scarecrow, it should be scarecrow/ (again, this
assumes you used the default names).  If you are unsure, try the best-guess
default.

Board URL - The URL to your ScareCrow CGI directory.  This should be
the URL into your cgi-bin/scarecrow directory, created earlier.  If you are
unsure, try the best-guess default.

Website URL - The URL to your website.

Non-CGI URL - The URL to your ScareCrow non-CGI directory.  This
should be the URL into your webroot/scarecrow directory (containing
the images, emoticons, avatars and uploads directories), created earlier.
If you are unsure, try the best-guess default.

Cookie Domain - The domain to send cookies from.  If you are unsure,
first try the best-guess default.  If you are having problems with cookies,
try changing that to remove the leading period in the Administrator Control
Panel.

Once you have completed the configuration options outlined above, click the
"Submit Configuration Changes" button.

The next screen will display a bit of data about which variables have been
saved, and with what values.  You can ignore that list.  The next set of
boxes is where you create the first Administrator account on the message
board.  It is with this account that you will be able to set-up and fully
control your message board, so choose the username and password carefully.
When you are satisfied with the results, submit the form.

The next screen should be a confirmation screen.  It outlines the rest of
the setup process for you.  Simply follow the guide there (and common
sense!) as you point your browser to the admincenter.cgi script (links are
provided for you on the confirmation screen) and set up your board options.
If you would like to make sure the configuration you have set up appears
valid before you continue, there is a link provided for a configuraiton
self-check as well.  It will tell you if it discovers any problems (and
attempt to fix those it can).  If there are any fatal errors, it will alert
you of that as well.

Congratulations!!  You have successfully installed your ScareCrow Message Board.
Just a few set up options to deal with and you're done.  Enjoy!