ExSite Installation Guide

System Requirements

ExSite has been installed and run successfully on Linux and OS X, but it should work on most Unix-y webserving environments. By default it runs in a CGI mode, so it should be compatible with a wide variety of servers. It is very happy on a typical LAMP server.

It is distributed to work with MySQL, but other DBs can be used with modifications to the DB package (not included). As distributed, the following system specs are recommended:

Server ComponentMinimum VersionRecommended Version
OS - Linux2.4 kernel2.6 kernel
OS - OS X10.310.5
Webserver - Apache1.32.0
Database - MySQL3.235.0
Development Language - Perl5.65.8

The following Perl modules are used by ExSite, and should either be installed in the system Perl libraries, or for pure perl modules, in subdirectories of the website's cgi-bin.

The next group of Perl modules is used by some features of ExSite. You can still have a fully functional installation without these, but some of the more advanced features may not be available:

Note that the system may operate without some of these installed, but the noted features may fail or not be available. Additionally, the following Perl modules are used by some optional plug-ins:

All Perl modules are available from CPAN, if your OS does not provide a more convenient method to install them.

The convert program (part of the ImageMagick image processing suite) is used for thumbnailing and image scaling operations, if it is available. It is also used as a fallback for Image::Info, if that package is unavailable.

Quick Installation

Read the Quick installation guide for an easy installation procedure that will work in most cases.

Advanced Installation

The Advanced installation guide describes how to manually install all files. The installation is fairly flexible, so this guide explains how you can alter various details of the installation to get a customized server setup, or manually install 3rd-party plugins.