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O = SYMPOLL = O
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Sympoll is a simple voting script written in PHP that utilizes MySQL.
Written by David Raeman (Ralusp), ralusp@mail.com, http://www.ralusp.net



*** BE SURE TO AT LEAST READ THE IMPORTANT NOTES AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS FILE! ***

INSTALL PROCESS:

Step 0)
Be sure you have PHP3 or PHP4 (http://www.php.net) installed and working 
correctly.  Also, have access to a MySQL database (http://www.mysql.com) 
somewhere.

Step 1)
Set up the necessary MySQL database that is used to store poll information.
A file is included, sympoll.mysql, to help with this.  An example of how to 
use this file is below.  Replace <user> with your MySQL user name.  Keep in
mind that this may be different than your login for the operating system.
This assumes you are in the same directory the sympoll.mysql file:

mysqladmin -u<user> -p create sympoll
mysql -u<user> -p sympoll < sympoll.mysql


Step 2)
Make sure you have a mysql user set up that will work with this script.
these are the minimum privileges needed:  SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE.
To simplify upgrading in the future, it's also highly recommened to grant
ALTER privileges to this user as well.

Step 3)
Place the entire Sympoll directory somewhere in your web path. 

Step 4)
Edit the config file, which can be found in the includes/ directory.
Comments should help guide you through the options.  Optionally, you
may also edit the files header.php3 and footer.php3 in the includes/
directory to suit your needs.  header.php3 will be included at the top
of the results page and the poll list page, and footer.php3 will be
included at the bottom of those two pages.  It is not recommended that
you remove any of the existing default lines, since most of them are there
for a reason.  It's best to only add to these two files.  Of course, you 
are free to do whatever you wish with them.

Step 5)
Rename admin.disabled to ANY FILE NAME with a php3 extension.  The
obvious choice is admin.php3, but you can use anything.  (for example,
fr00gle.php3, fjf2109t.php3, banana,php3, etc). Then load that page in your
web browser. From here, you can create/delete/modify/reset polls.  When no
polls currently exist, the only option is [hopefully] only Create.  Toggling 
the visibility will turn a poll on and off.  When a poll is off, the booth
cannot be displayed, votes cannot be tallied, and it doesn't show up on
the poll list.  But it stays in the database, and can be turned on again. 
When polls are created, they default to being OFF.


********************
IMPORTANT NOTES!!
********************

Note 1)
admin.php3 has no security built in yet (although it hopefully will soon).
Therefore, make sure you ALWAYS rename admin.php3 to admin.disabled after 
you use it (a la phorum) so that other people cannot use it.  Your web server 
will not know to interprate admin.disabled at php3 code, and so it will not 
run.  When you need to use it, rename it to admin.php3, make your changes, 
and then IMMEDIATELY rename it back to admin.disabled.  Also, it does not 
have to be named admin.  It is recommended that you rename it to something 
else.  The extensions (.php3 or .disabled) should probably be used though, 
unless you have a specific reason for doing otherwise (like a different 
httpd.conf setup)  Furthermore, I recommend setting up the Sympoll directory
to not allow directory browsing.  In Apache, this can be done by using a
.htaccess file.  Email me if you are using apache and need assistance.  I
know that this is possible for most (if not all) web servers, but apache is
the only one that I have experience with.

Note 2)
polllist.php3 is the only file included that is intended to be directly
linked to.  It is a list of all polls that are turned on, and allows
users to vote in any of them.  All other files will not work correctly
when linked to with an <A HREF> tag, and are used internally by Sympoll.

Note 3)
After creating or editing a poll, you'll notice that it gives instructions
on how to embed that particular poll in a web page.  Note that you do not 
HAVE to embed polls in webpages.  That's only if you want them to show up 
mixed in with your other pages, like your opening page or something.  All 
polls toggled on will automagically show up in polllist.php3 regardless.

