Installation Suggestions

[Matthew Orr]

Oh my gosh, this was a huge hassle to get installed and working especially for a Windows guy.  Maybe you Linux gurus are accustomed to making configuration changes by editing files, but for us from the Windows world this was a nightmare.

Just getting the platform setup was a huge pain in the butt.  But at least there were some videos on how to setup MySQL, Apache, and PHP.  I guess I can't complain to you about the challenges getting all the right components downloaded, installed and working.

But the instructions for setting up "easy" appointments was grossly insufficient.  It took me nearly a full day to get to a point where I could at least get the user interface up.  But here is the one thing that was the show stopper for me...

Edit file: C:\Apache24\htdocs\book\application\config\Config.php

Edit line to look like this: $config['sess_save_path']          = __DIR__ . '/../../storage/sessions/';

Now, I ask you. Where in the instructions did it say I needed to do this? And how on earth was I supposed to magically know the proper syntax?

Guys, you had better get a video produced for windows users... the entire platform.... or people like me will have to invest a lot of hours getting this setup.

Now, the next task.... figure out where on earth you setup the email server settings... probably in some ini file somewhere. Gee, how about put it under "settings"? I know, it's a crazy idea.

[Matthew Orr]

OK, this is pure insanity.  I just happened upon a file where I could put in my SMTP settings

C:\Apache24\htdocs\book\application\config\email.php

I also had to make the following changes to PHP here:

C:\PHP\php.ini

extension=php_openssl.dll

date.timezone = "US/Central"

Hello people, is this really the way to configure smtp settings?  How about some instructions?  It's a good thing I'm a resourceful fellow.  I got all kinds of bogus instructions in this group.  I'm now at 1.5 days to setup this application.

[Alex Tselegidis]

Hello Matthew, I'm sorry to hear that you had problems with the configuration of Easy!Appointments. 

I've read your post and I think the only problem which involves Easy!Appointments is the session handling. Since v1.2 I have upgraded CodeIgniter to v3 which for has unstable session handling for some reason. By unstable I mean that it will not work as it used to in servers that to not have the session.save_path setting set (can be also considered a mis-configuration). This will be fixed with the upcoming revision (v1.2.1). 

But the other problems you had seem to be there due to your lack of experience in configuring a web server. This is not a part of Easy!Appointments and hence there is no documentation for that. By setting up the server properly you shouldn't also have to provide SMTP settings directly to Easy!Appointments as PHP can take care of that as well. Also Easy!Appointments is using CodeIgniter which enables various configuration possibilities through the "/application/config/*" files. But it needs time till every configuration aspect can be implemented into a nice UI page so I prefer to spend my time in tasks that are more important. I personally need approximately 20 minutes to configure a server from ground up.

So please do not blame the project here, this is not a complaints forum. We try to provide help to users :) 

By the way the creation of an email configuration page is already registered as an upcoming feature: https://github.com/alextselegidis/easyappointments/issues/239

Till then here are the email configuration documentation for the "/application/config/email.php": http://www.codeigniter.com/user_guide/libraries/email.html

Alex Tselegidis, Easy!Appointments Creator   Need a customization? Contact me in person!

[Apis Bull]

I am having issues with this. Do I have to go through all my files that have ___DIR___ and change them to ../../../config.php?

http://www.hypnoticgestures.com/cgi-bin/appointments/book/index.php

[Apis Bull]

[Apis Bull]

error

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_FUNCTION, expecting ')' in /home4/wantads/public_html/hypnoticgestures.com/cgi-bin/appointments/book/autoload.php on line 15

[Apis Bull]

Do I change any of this?

* SYSTEM DIRECTORY NAME

 *---------------------------------------------------------------

 *

 * This variable must contain the name of your "system" directory.

 * Set the path if it is not in the same directory as this file.

 */

$system_path = 'system';

[Alex Tselegidis]

You only have to adjust the "/application/config/config.php". The errors you are getting are from other files which are not relevant so revert them. 

It you be helpful if you post your original problem. 

[Apis Bull]

I changed the base URL in /config/config.php and reverted index.php to original

 '/config.php’;

'/autoload.php’;

'/vendor/autoload.php’;

 

I'm still getting the same error

Warning: require_once(__DIR__/config.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home4/wantads/public_html/hypnoticgestures.com/cgi-bin/appointments/book/index.php on line 50

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '__DIR__/config.php' (include_path='.:/opt/php52/lib/php') in /home4/wantads/public_html/hypnoticgestures.com/cgi-bin/appointments/book/index.php on line 50

I didn't see anything else to change in /config/config.php

[Alex Tselegidis]

The root index.php file must require the root config.php and not the one in /application/config/config.php 

Is there a reason for installing E!A inside the cgi-bin directory?