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Technology Stocks : LINUX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: g_m10 who wrote (749)	12/17/1998 10:20:00 PM
From: Mitch Blevins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2615

Okay. So you're doing it from your home machine and you can install any software you want on it, right? The most important piece of software you can get is PHP. php3.org It is the 'Active Server Pages' of the Free software world. Look on their base library page and you can download a working version of slashdot.org implemented with PHP. Also search freshmeat.net for 'phplib' or something like that. It provides server side cookies for tracking users and all sorts of other stuff. SI does not use cookies for tracking users, but rather users 'Basic Authentication' built into the http protocol. This is probably a good way of identifying and authorizing users. You will need to read the apache docs (I assume apache is a given) for how to set up directories in your web tree to be protected. Once users log into your site with this, their identity will be available to any of your php/cgi scripts as the environmental variable '$REMOTE_USER'. MySQL is a good, fast backend database to use, and PHP has hooks to use it. (http://www.mysql.org). Best way to get started is probably to read alot, then try to implement something small. Just basic authentication and message storage/display. Then work your way up to threaded discussions, scoring, and stuff like that. Also, linked on the PHP site you will probably find alot of pre-made templates for message-boards that can give you a jump start. Also, for security, turn off the services you aren't using on the net-accessible machine. Probably just telnet/ssh and apache are all you really need. You can ip-masquerade with this box and keep your stuff like sendmail protected on the other side of the masquerade. -Mitch