------------------------------------------------------------- I N S T A L L A T I O N We IMPLORE you to read all of the verbiage below. We know how most of us are, so we put the install procedure up here, but if you have problems please read all of this file, PLUS the MiniVend documentation in doc/minivend.html. Also, please check out the official MiniVend FAQ at http://www.minivend.com/minivend/faq/ before you call for help. And send your system, Perl, and Minivend information, VERSIONS AND ALL! IMPORTANT NOTE: If you don't give evidence of having read and heeded the above heartfelt plea, your email may well be ignored. Caveat Emptor. WINDOWS INSTALLATION -------------------- Obtain the self-extracting executable minivend-3.10.exe and double-click on it. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you get the message "Bad command or file name" when trying to install, then that means that Perl is not installed on your machine or is not in your path. Go to http://www.perl.com and install the *standard* 5.004 version (AKA the Gurusamy Sarathy port). MiniVend will not work with the ActiveState 5.003 port; it appears to work well with the "Merge" port. If you already have the CYGWIN.DLL executable or plan on using the Perl link CGI, you can download the file minivend-3.10-nodll.exe and do the same. The defaults are set for Microsoft Personal Web Server on Win95 -- if you use another HTTP server you will have to know where to place CGI executables (the CGI-BIN) and HTML documents (DocumentRoot). If the program does not find BLAT, you can just enter 'none' when asked for SendMailProgram -- that will place all orders in the CATALOG_DIR/etc/tracking.asc and CATALOG_DIR/error.log as the demo is configured. You should get PGP as soon as possible so that you might have secure credit card number storage. Some features are untested in the Windows version, and it can be considered a beta. UNIX INSTALLATION ------------------ Here is the short version: gzip -dc minivend-3.10.tar.gz | tar xvf - cd minivend-3.10 ./configure Long version with comments: # Unzip and untar the file -- if you have GNU tar, you can substitute # 'tar xzf minivend-3.10.tar.gz' gzip -dc minivend-3.10.tar.gz | tar xvf - # Change directory to the one that was created # cd minivend-3.10 # If you have trouble with picking up the wrong Perl version, # try '/dir/where/perl/is/perl Makefile.PL # # If you aren't already the user ID of the user who will run the # minivend server, you might want to 'su' to that user before # running this step. # # This step will set the MiniVend directory and Perl location, # and build the Makefile. # # If you are upgrading from a previous version, put the # former MiniVend root directory in when prompted for # VendRoot. # perl Makefile.PL # Make the library modules and docs make # Run a rudimentary test to ensure the server and sockets # run on your system make test # Install the files and compile the link programs # make install #### At this point, you can follow the instructions that the configure program generates. If you installed MiniVend in another directory besides the current one, you will have to change directories to that directory before continuing. #### # Become superuser if you are an ISP or other organization that # will be running multiple catalogs. If you don't have root access, # don't worry about it. # # Make the demo catalog. You will be prompted for some initial # server-wide parameters, then the catalog-specific parameters. # bin/makecat simple # Start the MiniVend server # bin/start That should be it. If you have problems, please do what is asked above, and pretty please reference the web site. And -- WHEN IN DOUBT, RE-START THE SERVER. It won't take but a few seconds, and changes in configurable options don't take effect until it is done. You may even change a page and not see the effect until the server is restarted. ------------------------------------------------------------------ S E T T I N G U P Y O U R C A T A L O G Setting up a MiniVend catalog can be quite complex, and that is why the documentation and demo were provided. They should be sufficient to get you started. Many hours have been spent in documenting the features of MiniVend, and thoughtful users should almost always find their answers there. Key things that people sometimes don't understand: -- The actual pages of the catalog are NOT in HTML document space. They are in the catalog directory of the catalog that is in question. -- The highly interpolative nature of MiniVend and HTML tags means that interpolation order, not page position order, is often important when using the OLD tag syntax. When using the NEW page syntax, tags are interpreted in the order they appear on the page. It is strongly recommended that you move to the new syntax, as MiniVend 4.0 will be removing many of the old tags. -- The first thing to do in setting up a custom MiniVend catalog is to define the database. Everything with MiniVend stems from the products database -- many of the custom features depend on the shipping, salestax, accessories, pricing, and other databases. Determine your data set first. -- The demo pages are there to be played with. With MiniVend 3.0, you can't stop the system simply by changing a page. -- Many of the configurable features of MiniVend are determined by the directives in catalog.cfg (or minivend.cfg in a standalone catalog). -- You don't need to do anything to pass variables from page to page. If you set it, MiniVend will remember it in the user session. -- WHEN IN DOUBT, RE-CONFIGURE THE CATALOG. It won't take but a few seconds, and changes to many of the configurable options don't take effect until it is done.