Now that you have Blosxom, you’re
just
a few short steps away from your first blog entry. Customizing
Blosxom for your particular environment requires just a couple of
simple configuration changes. Open the blosxom
script in your favorite text editor.
First make sure the first line of the script
(#!/usr/bin/perl -w
) correctly identifies the
location of your Perl interpreter. If you’re unsure
and have access to the command line, type:
% which perl /usr/local/bin/perl
Copy and paste the resulting output after the #!
in the blosxom script (e.g.,
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
). If you
don’t have access to the command line, ask your
service provider or system administrator for help. Be sure
there’s no space between the #!
and the path to Perl.
About the only thing Blosxom really needs to know is where you keep
your blog entries. Change the $datadir
line from:
my $datadir = '/Library/WebServer/Documents/blosxom';
to the appropriate directory path. For Mac OS X and Unix users, we recommend something alongside your web server’s document directory:
my $datadir = '/Library/WebServer/Data/blosxom';
or:
my $datadir = '/usr/local/apache/data/blosxom';
Under Windows, somewhere like:
my $datadir = 'c:Inetpubwwwdatalosxom';
If you’ll be running Blosxom on your service provider’s web server, somewhere in your home directory will do nicely:
my $datadir = '/home/sam/blosxom';
Wherever you choose, just be sure the directory is readable by the web server.
That said, you probably don’t want to put
Blosxom’s data anywhere web-accessible (your
server’s document root or
public_html
directory). While, of course, your
entries will end up being publicly viewable anyway, you may want to
keep drafts or other assorted files that might end up in your Blosxom
directory private.
Save the blosxom
script, then move the it to
your cgi-bin or other directory out of which
you’re able to run CGI scripts.
/Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables
/usr/local/apache/cgi-bin
c:InetpubwwwrootCgi-bin
/home/sam/public_html/cgi-bin
You can do this either via your operating system’s
graphical file manager or on the command line; if your CGI directory
were /home/sam/public_html/cgi-bin/
,
you’d say:
% mv blosxom /home/sam/public_html/cgi-bin
You may need to rename the blosxom
script to
blosxom.cgi
so it’s recognized
by your web server as a CGI script. Again, you can do this via
graphical file manager or on the command line:
% cd /home/sam/public_html/cgi-bin % mv blosxom blosxom.cgi
Make sure your web server has permission to run the
blosxom.cgi
script by saying:
% chmod 755 blosxom.cgi
Note: Permissions vary from situation to situation; if you’re unsure, ask your local administrator or service provider. That said, 755 is a reasonably safe bet.
Next, create the directory you specified as the
$datadir
to hold your blog entries. This directory
and its contents must be
readable (writable is not necessary)
by the web server. If you chose
/home/sam/blosxom
, for instance,
you’d say:
% mkdir /home/sam/blosxom % chmod 755 /home/sam/blosxom
Your Blosxom weblog is ready to go.