Greymatter Tutorial and Installation How To

This tutorial describes how to use the Greymatter software with your NEXCESS.NET web hosting account. NEXCESS.NET specializes in hosting Greymatter blogs and this tutorial is meant to help you quickly setup your Greymatter with our web hosting service.

Greymatter is about as open source as you can get. Apart from selling the code or removing the copyright information, you can do just about anything you want with this blog.

For the sake of this tutorial we'll assume that you own the domain 'johnsmith.com' and are setting up Greymatter at http://johnsmith.com/gm/.

Follow these steps to complete the tutorial:

1. Download the latest version of Greymatter from the Greymatter website and unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop using http://winzip.com.

   You should now have 1 folder and a bunch of other files on your desktop. Create a 'gm' folder on your desktop and put all of the files that were in the zip file into it. Create a folder called 'archives' in the 'gm' folder. Upload the 'gm' folder to your web hosting account. You should do this using an FTP Program. If you need help with FTPing files, you can check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page.

   Note: If you'd like to place the 'gm' folder outside of the cgi-bin, you'll need to contact us by support ticket or email support@nexcess.net in order to enable '.cgi' files outside the cgi-bin.

   Once the Greymatter files and folders have finished uploading, you need to change the permissions on some of the files. You can do this with the CHMOD command in your FTP program. If you need help with this, check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page. The following lists the correct files to CHMOD and their permissions:

   • CHMOD the 'gm.cgi' file to 755
   • CHMOD the 'gm-karma.cgi' file to 755
   • CHMOD the 'gm-comments.cgi' file to 755
   • CHMOD the 'gm-upload.cgi' file to 755
   • CHMOD all the remaining '.cgi' files except for 'gm-library.cgi' to 666
   • CHMOD the 'index.html' file to 666
   • CHMOD the 'archives' folder to 777

2. Now we're going to access the 'gm.cgi' file so we can login and finish installing our Greymatter. In this example, we'll point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/gm/gm.cgi'. If you receive any errors, check to make sure you set the correct permissions on all the files. You should be at this screen now:

   

   For the first time accessing this script, we'll login using 'Alice' for the author and 'wonderland' for the password. These values ARE case sensitive so make sure you enter them exactly as shown. Click the 'Enter' button to login. Once you login, you should be on this page:

   

   This page tells us everything we need to do to finish the installation before we can use our Greymatter. Click on the 'Configuration' button to continue. The page we're on now lists all the paths to let the script know where to access certain files and folders on the web hosting account. You shouldn't need to change anything in the 'Path Configuration' section. Your page should look like this:

   

   Scroll down the rest of the page and change the settings how you see fit for your Greymatter. In the 'E-mail Options' section, the 'E-mail program location' field should be correct for your web hosting account, so you don't need to change this value. Continue down the page changing values according to how you want your Greymatter to run. When you reach the bottom of the page, click the 'Save configuration' button to continue. You should be back on this page, but with a different message at the top:

   

3. Click on the 'Configuration' button again. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you see the 'Diagnostics & Repair' button.

   

   Click the button to continue. It will take you to this page:

   

   Once you click this button, you'll have to let the tests run uninterrupted or else you run the risk of corrupting the installation. Click the 'Perform Diagnostics & Repair' button to run the tests. It should complete with no problems and take you to this screen:

   

   Click the 'Return to Main Menu' button to continue. You should now be at this page again:

   

   Now what you do with your Greymatter is up to you. I would suggest deleting the 'Alice' author and creating your own, but that is totally up to you. The Greymatter web hosting tutorial is now complete.

   For more information on how to use GreyMatter once it's installed, check out the GreyMatter.

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