LaNewsFactory - Yet another web news software in php.
Copyright 2000 by Christophe Brocas (christophe.brocas@free.fr)

Distributed under the GNU GPL.  See the files "Copying" and
"Copyright" supplied with the distribution for additional info.


What is LaNewsFactory ?
-----------------------

LaNewsFactory (LNF) is a set of php scripts to build a web news frontend.
It does not need any database stuff to manage news. It only require a php 
enabled web server. I just want a reliable system that allows fast and 
easy news management for the web.

LNF is a file-oriented news system : a news is contained in a file and 
answers to this news are append at the end of the file.

This documentation applies to LaNewsFactory version 0.2.x.

Installing LaNewsFactory:
-------------------------
Create a directory and un-tar/un-zip the distribution file in it.

Current version have 3 subdirectories :
. a subdirectory called "images",
. a subdirectory called "general" that will contain the news (i.e. files),
. a subdirectory called "scripts" that contains the php scripts.

Configuring LaNewsFactory:
-------------------------
Edit the usersettings.php3 file in the "scripts" subdirectory and modify the 
following variables :

$url variable:
Put the URL of your site directory that contains LNF.
Example : $url = "http://foo.com/lnf/"; 
Don't forget the last "/".

$lang variable:
Give the language you want. 2 choices for the moment : fr for french, 
us for english.
Example : $lang = "fr"; 

If you want to modify HTML aspects of LNF, edit the head/tail.php3 files 
to make your changes.

That's all !

Running LaNewsFactory:
-------------------------
To run LNF, you have to request the "listdir.php3" script via a web client. 
And, then, let's go write and answer news. 

How it works:
-------------
LNF contains users side scripts and internal scripts. The users side scripts 
return results to the user, internals not.

User side scripts are :

listdir.php3:
list news in a last created/first viewed order. You can answer or see the 
comments of a news from that screen. The files returned to the user screen 
are the *.art files found in the "general" LNF subdirectory.

print.php3:
displays the content of a news with its answers. It receive the news 
filename as argument.

contrib.php3:
allows the user to write a news. The file that contains that news will be 
created in the "general" LNF subdirectory. The name of the file (it 
differs from the news title) will have that kind of format : 
YYYYMMDD-HHmmss.art . Example : 20000822-145522.art is a news posted on  
August 8th 2000 at 2:55.22 PM.

head/tail.php3:
are the scripts that are always called by each user side script to display 
the initial and last HTML tags of the web page. That is there you can change 
the HTML aspects of the web news site.

Internal side scripts are :

newarticle.php3:
is called by contrib.php3 with the different parts of the news as arguments. 
The parts of the news come from a HTML form and the script is called via the 
POST method.

appendarticle.php3:
is like newarticle.php3 but it appends the arguments at the end of the file 
passed as argument.

functions.php3:
regroups the differents functions needed by the others scripts.

usersettings.php3:
contains the user preferences (language and URL for the moment).

Final notes:
------------
LaNewsFactory is designed to be as easy to use as possible. I really don't 
want it to need database to work despite database have a lot of usefull 
features. In fact, when you have a free ISP, you not always have access to 
MySQL or other RDBMS to build an interactive web site.
LNF is in early stage of development and many features are not yet 
implemented and bugs surely exist. So, bugs reports and evolutions ideas 
are always welcome at christophe.brocas@free.fr . 
Unfortunately, I am not be able to give you a bug correction delay or an 
evolution schedule.


