The engenu public beta test

Known issue: Some PHP installations are sterner about user-installed software than others. If you have installed engenu per the instructions and you get an error message like this one:

"Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration"

You (or the tech support staff at your ISP) will need to edit the file named PHP.ini to include the following lines:

allow_url_fopen=on
allow_url_include=on
safemode=off


More, from Cheryl Johnson:

I'm passing this along because it might be useful if you are helping anyone else with installing engenu on a GoDaddy server...

I made a copy of my php.ini file. Named the copy php5.ini and uploaded it (so the server now has both a php.ini and a php5.ini file) That did the trick. Engenu is running there just fine now.


The beta test...

This is a public beta test of engenu, slide-show-oriented web page/web site creation software running on Apache web servers.

If you want to find out about engenu, start here, then meander at will.

What do you need to participate in this beta test? Three things:
  1. Root access to an Apache web server running PHP -- that would be all Unix, Linux and Macintosh OS-X web servers, plus most Windows servers.
  2. Practiced skill with an FTP client on your computer.
  3. A strong need to create a lot of web pages, especially pages containing many photos.
I wrote engenu to support our real estate practice, but you don't have to be a Realtor to use it. It helps, though, if you have a frequent need to communicate in photos.

My belief is that engenu is free of software bugs -- but that's what we're testing for. If you unearth a problem, let me know about it by email. I will communicate known problems and software updates on this page.

engenu is built to be file-server and appearance independent. This means two things:
  1. If you have multiple file servers, you can install engenu on any or all of them. Your engenu pages will run fine on any one of those servers.
  2. It is possible to build different "skins" for engenu installations. The default software will produce pages that look like this one. By contrast, here is an engenu "skin" designed to look like our real estate brokerage's weblog.
engenu itself is free, but customized "skins" are not. If you would like to obtain a customized "skin" for your business, say so by email. Note that any sites you build with the default version of engenu will inherit the appearance of your customized "skin."

To begin your testing of engenu, first register your unique password, then install the software on your web server. The engenu software documentation is here, and I will be using your feedback to improve this as we go along. (As a fair warning, we lost some of the documentation files (how stupid is that?) and restored them from scanned hard copies, so you may trip upon the (very) odd typo.)

This is a software beta test, but engenu is already serious working software. We use it every day to communicate with clients, vendors and co-workers. Nothing that we discover by testing and repair in the future will break the engenu sites you make now, so I entreat you to put it to work on live jobs. That way, you'll get the most use out if it, and that is the way we will discover any lingering problems in the software.

Thanks for your participation!