Blog SystemUser Manual
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Getting started

Requirements and installation

Installing Blog System takes a few minutes: upload the files, edit one configuration file and run the installer in your browser.

Server requirements

  • PHP 8.0 or newer with the extensions pdo_mysql, curl, gd, mbstring and fileinfo (intl is recommended for localized dates).
  • MySQL 5.7 or MySQL 8 (InnoDB with FULLTEXT support).
  • Apache with mod_rewrite (recommended). Nginx works with an equivalent rewrite rule.
  • HTTPS is strongly recommended, especially because bloggers pay and log in.

Installation steps

  1. Upload the files. Upload the contents of the BlogSystem folder to the web root (or a sub-folder) of your hosting account.
  2. Edit config.php. Enter your domain, the database host, database name, user and password, and the table prefix.
  3. Run the installer. Open https://your-site.com/install/ in your browser. It creates the tables, default settings, pages, packages and templates, and your administrator account. You can optionally add demo bloggers with sample posts.
  4. Delete the /install folder. Do this immediately after the installation.
  5. Set folder permissions. Make these folders writable by the web server: uploads/, thumbnails/, uploaded_images/, languages/, categories/ and locations/.
  6. Log in at https://your-site.com/ADMIN/ with the account you created.

Alternative database setupInstead of the web installer you can import install/blogsystem.sql into an empty database with phpMyAdmin.

Before going liveDelete the /install folder and any demo bloggers (their e-mail addresses end in @example.com), and make sure the site runs over HTTPS.

Running locally for testing

You can test on your own computer with PHP's built-in server. The included router does what .htaccess does on Apache:

php -S localhost:8080 router.php

What is in the package

FolderPurpose
index.php, include/Public website entry point and the shared PHP classes
extensions/Modules of the public site: home, blogs, discover, pricing, register, login, blog...
templates/default/The design of the main website
blog_templates/The 22 blogger templates plus shared base CSS and JavaScript
ADMIN/The administration panel
USERS/The blogger panel
languages/Translation files
categories/, locations/Blog topics and countries stored as text files
uploads/Images uploaded by bloggers, one folder per blogger

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