SilverStripe

SilverStripe is a php based Content Management System that is used to run the libreoffice.org and documentfoundation.org websites.

Requirements

  1. Webserver (currently using apache, but switching to nginx is trivial)
  2. Database (using mysql currently, postgresql support is available)
  3. mod_php/php-fpm or similar to run php via the webserver
  4. php-opcode cacher like xcache
  5. Open Port(s): 80 TCP, 443 TCP (standard webserver ports)

Installation

  • Create database user & database in mysql:

    sudo mysql <<EOF
CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON dbname.* TO 'username'@'localhost';
EOF

  • Configure webserver - details depend on webserver and method of running php that was chosen

    • redirect non-existing URLs to silverstripe’s main.php
    • directly hand out exsisting files
    • usual blocking of access to configuration files, etc.
    • use maintenance.php when it exists to put the site into maintenance mode

  • import existing database to mysql, or if you want to start from scratch

  • clone https://github.com/tdf/cms-code into the webroot and https://github.com/tdf/cms-themes into webroot/themes & update the containing submodules:

    rm -r /srv/http/silverstripe
git clone https://github.com/tdf/cms-code /srv/http/silverstripe
rm -r /srv/http/silverstripe/themes
git clone https://github.com/tdf/cms-themes /srv/http/silverstripe/themes
cd /srv/http/silverstripe && git submodule update --init

  • copy private configuration into place:

    cp _config.php /srv/http/silverstripe/mysite/_config.php

  • run dev/build to update the database to the new types introduced in the custom-setup:

    /srv/http/silverstripe/sapphire/sake dev/build

  • remove maintenance.php file that is included in the repo:

    rm /srv/http/silverstripe/sapphire/maintenance.php

Updating

The code is managed on github, modulo a few local changes, so to update, the general approach is to do:

cd /srv/http/silverstripe
git stash save && git pull -r && git stash pop

Depending on the characteristics of the changes, you either need to run dev/build as above (new php → changes to the DB needed) and/or flush all (new template files) - to flush all append ?flush=all to the URL

Note

git stash save will restore the maintenance.php, i.e. put the page into maintenance mode during the update, this allows for a clean update, without the user getting weired errors because dev/build wasn’t run or when there are merge conflicts that need to be cleaned up.

Translations - Syncing from/to pootle

Some strings from the automatically generated pages are managed in pootle, so translators have an easy time trasnlating. For the newdesign site, only one single file is relevant, namely newdesign.po

Silversripe however keeps its translations (and other configuration data) in yaml files, so conversion has to be performed to integrate it into the repository.

Conversion to yaml is a little tricky, as yaml supports a variety of different ways to describe a string (esp. continuation of split lines), but silverstripe’s parser only supports the simple method. So to convert, you have to run the strings to msgcat –no-wrap to make all strings single-line ones, and then use the patched po2yaml tool from https://github.com/unho/yaml2po.git

Patched means: replacing
outfile.puts(tr.to_yaml)
by
outfile.puts(tr.to_yaml(:line_width => -1))

to the po2yaml script.

so first get newdesign-<lang>.po files from pootle (download the website project).

converting to single-line translations is necessary for the po2yaml scripts to make use of the translations:

for i in newdesign*po ; do msgcat --no-wrap $i > $(echo $i |sed -e 's#newdesign-##'); rm $i; done
# then convert to yaml
for i in *po; do po2yaml $i $(basename $i po)yml ; done
# strip all files that don't contain translations (all consisting of only two lines)
wc -l *yml |awk '/^\s+2\s/{print $2}' |xargs -r rm
# move to mysite/lang, git add and commit
mv *yml /path/to/mysite/lang/ ; cd /path/to/mysite/lang
git add * yml
# optionally check for consistency
git commit -m "update translations"

to create update pot from yml, there’s helper task in silverstripe that extacts translations (./framework/tasks/i18nTextCollectorTask.php) - although it creates the translation files per-module, and not a single one, so some manual tewaking is necessary (or since new strings aren’t added en-masse usually): Just add them manually to the en-US.yml file.

conversion to pot for pootle then is done with the companion utility from the abovementioned repository (yaml2po) - for updating pootle itself with the newly created newdesign.pot, please refer to the pootle documentation.

Adding Users and Subsites

to facilitate adding new subsites and new members, custom “ModelAdmin” components have been created that are accessible from the main subsite if you have admin-privileges in silverstripe.

Adding a new subsite using the form/csv method will copy the content from the main (en-US) site as a template to use for translation.

The Group admin provides an easier interface to adding people (as with default way, you’d have to switch to the subsite where you want to add the people first) In the group admin, you can just select the group/search for the corresponding project and add a member directly. Visit https://www.libreoffice.org/admin/group_import/, select/open the group, add the user and done. If you’re adding a new user, make use of the “forgot-password” funcitonality to have the system send a PW-Reset-Link to the new user.

Initially they were created to do mass-import from the old site, but that is no use case aynmore (but of course can still be used to mass-add a bunch of editors)

Starting, Stopping, Disabling

Starting/Stopping is done via the webserver - to disable the site, you can enable the maintenance mode by restoring the maintenance.php file:

cd /srv/http/silverstripe
git checkout -- maintenance.php

To enable again, just delete the maintenance.php file again.

Responsible

cloph