PHPNuke: I have to use it. I don't know PHP.

Where do I start?

[dragonlady7]

I'd never heard of PHPNuke, but my boss has selected it for the dynamic, "community" part of our company website. He had one of our programmers set it up, but now the guy has been sent off to work on more serious issues and they've abandoned the PHPNuke site to me.
I don't know any PHP and haven't got the time to learn it.
I have been searching and searching for a tutorial on using PHPNuke. I just don't know where to start. Most things I've found have been in various foreign languages, and the few that were (badly) translated into English mostly explained how to install the program-- not how to use it once it was running.
The programmer has no information for me. He doesn't know, and he doesn't speak English anyway.
Where do I start? My first issue is that an unregistered guest, any unregistered guest, can make God-Admin changes with no problem. Where do I even look for how to fix that?

This has just sort of been dumped on me, and i thought Google would help me find the answers, but I've found almost nothing useful. Does anyone have any idea where I could find a good help site or tutorial? I don't even know where to post this message-- this forum is about PHP so maybe there'll be some kind of overlap, but it's not the PHP I need help with-- it's the entire concept. PHPNuke.org isn't any help at all...
So lost. Thanks in advance for any help...

[jatar_k]

looks like you're in for some fun then

your admin url should be something like

www.yoursite.com/admin.php
and look something like

[phpnuke.org...]

I hope you have the admin user/pass at least. There is user management and all sorts of things in there.

[jatar_k]

found these too
nuketutorials.com
nukesupport.com

do you have phpmyadmin on your site as well? That may help you manage the mysql portion of it.

[dragonlady7]

Thanks for the pointers so far. I tracked down the programmer and in a lengthy conversation with lots of stammering and gesturing, we managed to communicate that neither of us knows a bloody thing about it.

Fun!

I had printed out a guide to PHPNuke but it was so poorly translated from Italian that I think I've just discovered a new insomnia remedy. ^.^

I think the problem is that the security is simply not working. I can act as the admin even when not logged in. That seems... well, bad. So...
I shall certainly browse the tutorials and support site and see if I can come up with anything. Hopefully soon I'll be able to post specific questions, or I suppose better still no questions at all!
:D

[wibble]

i use php nuke and have no php experience (which i hope to change soon)

try these sites:

[phpnuke.org...] - main site for php nuke
[nukecops.com...] - team of developers that seem to be the main people involved in fixes and new features
[nukeresources.com...] - place to get lots of modules and blocks once you are up and running

the forums on nukecops are excellent as they seem to be the main developers of php-nuke now. There are lots of issues and set up tweaks (although my install seemed fairly painless) that may affect the security and it also depends what version of php-nuke you are using. version 6.9 is available now!

I don't think i'll be much help with any php issues, but being a php newbie like you i might be able to help out with php-nuke issues.... maybe :)

[dragonlady7]

Thanks.

My company has decided it's most effective to have one of our programmers do the installation, and then I'll take over doing the management. But, none of our programmers has any time for it just now, so I'm sort of stuck just waiting.
Sigh.

[WildZBill]

I am sure that your security is working.
The problem you have is that the site remembers that you are the admin, so you always have admin rights. You have to do an admin logout, then come back and register as a user.

Of course, when you want to be admin again, you have to go to www.yoursite.com/admin.php as jatar_k said.

[reuben101]

Sounds like quite a predicament! If your boss is the understanding sort and wants a functional message system yesterday you might want to try to talk him/her into switching to Invision board software. It has the same level of functionality (better in some aspects)and has excellent English documentation and support boards. The best part is they offer tech help for registered users which has been very useful to me. I don't mean this to be an advertisement as there are a number of excellent packages available, I just think Invision to be the best for those that require a bit of tech support now and again. They can install it as well.

Best of luck!

[kwasher]

You can search on tutorials here

[phpnuke.org...]

[komodo1]

One of the long running issues with phpnuke aside from the excessive amounts of calls it makes to the database is cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. Your programmers will need to create a script to sanitize not only GET variables, but POST and COOKIE based variables as well. This involves converting the HTML tag characters < > to their displayable equivalents. Otherwise they can just use a free include script like ccisecurity.php from [hotscripts.com...]

[shasan]

I'll be using phpnuke on my next site. I wish I'd tried it sooner, it just didn't have the stuff I was looking for so my current site is a mix and match of different php apps.

one thing's for sure though, you don't have to speak english to make some kick ass web apps. PHPNuke is supposed to be awesome. Actually, on my current site there are NO applications that were coded by English-speakers :)

I'm half contemplating learning German and Russian :)

cheers
shasan.

[kwasher]

This should be part of the Quick Start Guide- see the post "10 Steps to starting...."

nukesupport.com/board/viewthread.php?TID=6522&FID=5

[mrguy]

I just installed the latest version and I must say for being pretty new to PHP, the install was rather easy.

I really like the latest version as it has a lot of cool functions.

[lorax]

I used PHPNuke as my first CMS system. I've since built my own as I found it too limiting.

The PHPNuke community seems to be alive and well and the last time I looked there were many sites that had modules available for customizing it. You don't necessarily need to know PHP to add these but it does help.

The biggest help I found were the forums. A bit of searching and reading and then posting when I was lost helped me a lot. The folks I dealt with were a friendly lot.

[BlueSky]

I think it's a good idea to learn php and mysql even if you use a prepackaged software like phpNuke. A lot of folks who develop modules and other addons are novices and can easily introduce security holes or make your site run slow. By having some knowledge, you can patch or rework their code. It also helps in troubleshooting problems or just maintaining the site.

[kwasher]

PHP-NUKE is awesome. I've joined the phpnuke club and am running the latest release 7. The security issues and many other issues have/are being addressed by the community. Thats probably the best thing about it... its open-source software so there isn't just one dude in a kitchen somewhere writing, its the whole world.

[dirkz]

I'm in some similar position now, having to use phpnuke.

What to do in order to get it as crawler-friendly as possible? Are there possibilities to change the URLs used in the system?

[dragonlady7]

Heh... due to hardware problems, we still haven't launched the site in question. Disturbing, no? If we can't even manage to get the server up, I have no doubt we'll never manage to get the site working. The powers that be here have no idea how much maintenance is required. They want me to magically put something up, without spending any time, and have it never hiccup, never flinch, never twitch. But they won't allow me to spend the time to learn php, and they won't spare any of the time of the programmers in the company to help maintain it. It's a project doomed to failure-- even if we get it up, the first hiccup will incapacitate it for six months until a programmer has time to sort it out.

But, it's OK-- they're firing me anyway, so I can just add this to my list of reasons I'm glad to go.

Best of luck to the rest of you, and yeah-- from what I can tell, PHPnuke is pretty cool. But it doesn't just pop up and run itself. Despite how convenient that would be for my boss. (I suggested getting a different solution that didn't require so much work. He said no. Shrug.)

[lorax]

Sorry to hear they're letting you go but as you noted - it's better for you not to be involved with a project that has a set course for disaster.

[kwasher]

Actually, you sort of could set it up 'and go'. So maybe its time for an attitude change... from disaster to 'here ya go boss'. Of course, if you are already sure of your firing, why do anything for the dude?

I've already written up instructons for near newbies, it requires shell access on your part, but after that its pretty much automatic... even updates/patches itself nightly if you want to set up a cron job. This is still in beta, but is very stable at this time and sets up php-nuke version 6.8 enhanced.

More info on the automatic shell install/update? start here-
[nukecops.com...]

Or just download the latest file snapshot (bottom of page) and unzip/untar it, then upload the files to your site however you normally ftp your site files-
[snaps.nukecops.com...]

There is also a growing manual for php-nuke here-
[splatt.it...]

Once you get the gist of running a php-nuke site, its pretty easy and can kind of take care of itself if you set things up to do so (like not requiring the webmaster to preapprove things like links, etc).

GOOD LUCK!

P.S. The betaNC version, mentioned above, has a feature called Google-Tap built into it. GT, as it is known, takes the php query's and such and turns it them into .html files (using mod-rewrite), which makes them more search-engine friendly.