FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT SIPS
-------------------------------------

If your question isn't answered here, you're most welcome to post them to
our mailinglist, sips-user. For details on joining, please visit
<URL:http://sips.sourceforge.net/mailinglist.php>.


QUESTIONS:
1. I can't log into my sips site! What gives?
2. I can't seem to set the permissions correctly. Help!
3. My provider requires my PHP file extensions to be .php3, .phtml, .php4 ...
4. My provider runs PHP in "safe mode", and SIPS won't work properly!
5. SIPS needs several directories to have world writable permissions (777).
   Isn't that insecure?
6. I like the SIPS project. Is there anything I can do to contribute?
7. Will SIPS someday have...



ANSWERS:

1. I can't log into my sips site! What gives?

A: There can be several reasons for this:
   - Did you create a user for yourself? Even administrators have to do this.
   - Do you have cookies enabled in your browser? SIPS won't work without this.
   - If you have experimented with other SIPS sites nested under the same
     domain, make sure you're properly logged out of the others (just go to
     logout.php)
   - If you still have the problem, your PHP probably doesn't have "track_vars"
     enabled. Here's the solution:
      * PHP3 users:
         - If you have root access to the system, put "track_vars on" into
           your php3.ini (in /usr/local/lib, /etc or elsewhere) and restart
           the server.
         - Otherwise, put "php3_track_vars on" into a file called .htaccess
           which you put in your web root (htdocs, public_html or elsewhere)
      * PHP4 users:
         - If you have root access to the system, put "track_vars on" into
           your php.ini (in /usr/local/lib, /etc or elsewhere) and restart
           the server.
         - Otherwise, put "php_flag track_vars on" into a file called .htaccess
           which you put in your web root (htdocs, public_html or elsewhere)


2. I can't seem to set the permissions correctly. Help!

A: Try, try again. If that fails, try "man chmod". Don't e-mail me about this.
Damnit, Spock, I'm a coder, not a support tech! ;-)


3. My provider requires my PHP file extensions to be .php3, .phtml, .php4 ...

A: Here's what you can do, in this order:
   - First ask your provider to kindly allow for .php extensions as well. Any
     provider that's worth keeping will fix this for you :)
   - If that doesn't work out, run the included convert-to-php3.sh to convert
     file names and references to .php3 (see instructions in that file). It
     doesn't fix everything and is not supported by me, but it should be better
     than nothing at all. The script was most kindly written by Marc Nozell
     <marc@nozell.com> (who won't support it either - basically, you're on your
     own :).
   
   For the record, I decided on using the .php extensions because SIPS should
   be able to run on both PHP3 and PHP4.


4. My provider runs PHP in "safe mode", and SIPS won't work properly!

A: I know. You should really get a new provider, or convince the one you have
   to drop the safe mode.
   The reason SIPS refuses to work in safe mode, is that it needs _you_ to have
   the ownership of files it writes, which it won't have since those files are
   created by the web server UID. There is no solution to this.



5. SIPS needs several directories to have world writable permissions (777).
   Isn't that insecure?

A: Short answer: SIPS could be short for "Sips Is Poor Security" ;-)
   
   Long answer:
   Sure it is insecure. If other users have access to the machine, they can
   cd into the directories if they know about them, and cause certain degrees
   of havoc. That's the danger of it, and unfortunately, there's no way around
   it. Some directories needs world writability for the web server user to be
   able to write to them (for instance, to save stories, user data etc).
   
   This is not, however, a problem exclusive to SIPS. Any CGI-script that
   writes to the file system needs world writability. Other web log systems
   don't have this vulnerability because they don't write rawly to the file
   system, but that's the way it is with SIPS :)
   
   If anyone does come up with some creative way around this problem, do let me
   know!


6. I like the SIPS project. Is there anything I can do to contribute?

A: If you code PHP and feel you can contribute there, contact haakon@quit.net
   and I might give you CVS access :) If you're not a coder, the next best
   thing to bless the project with is your ideas. None are too stupid, and
   feature requests are also most welcome so that I can get a feel of what
   "the people" want! :) If you're completely drained for ideas, I also
   appreciate e-mail notes just to say you use SIPS, or tried it, and how
   you like it! If your site runs SIPS, you should consider noting me about it
   at haakon@quit.net so that I can add your site to the list at
   sips.sourceforge.net!


7. Will SIPS someday have...
   - Polls?
      A: Yes, providing I can find a usable poll script that is integratable
         and doesn't use a database server, polls are high on my TODO list.
         I'm looking to adding a nice polls part to the admin section for this.
   - Discussion like Slash and all the others have?
      A: Yes, but this is like the last thing I'll do before 1.0. I want to
         get the more basic things stable and complete before persuing this.
         Also, the discussion part will _not_ be as advanced as that of
         slash. It will not have moderation, and will have less options for
         sorting etc. to keep it simple and system friendly.
   - Internationialization / localization?
      A: Yes! SIPS will offer pluggable language modules. So far it looks like
         the first included language modules will be English, Spanish and
         Norwegian, and I'll add other modules if YOU'll translate to your own
         language.
   - Rotatable banner adds?
      A: I'm considering it, but I'm not sure how much demand there is for
         it. Please tell me what you think at haakon@quit.net (damn, this is
         just the kind of thing I need polls for! ;)
   - An SQL backend?
      A: I think your mama has ice cream in the oven for you.
   - Feature X?
      A: Just e-mail me at haakon@quit.net with any feature wish you have,
         and I'll consider it.


$Id: FAQ,v 1.2 2000/07/15 20:45:52 haakon Exp $
