Installing Galaxie Blog on your own website.
Jun 10

Requirements
You will need to have a hosting provider that supports ColdFusion. I have tested the software on both ColdFusion 2016 and 2018 and the software should work on all recent ColdFusion servers. However, if you want to use captcha to prevent spam, you should be running on ColdFusion 2016. Peter Farrel used sun Java classes which are deprecated in ColdFusion 2018 and Java 7. I will rewrite Peter's logic in a future version. You will also need to have a database. It is recommended that you use Microsoft SQL Server, or MySql, but this blog should also work with Oracle and Microsoft Access. Download the installation zip file
The installation package is found near the top right section of Galaxie Blog. Click on the download button, and a new window will open. The content within the window will have a brief installation instructions along with credits and license information. Please read through it and click on the download button at the very bottom of the window. The browser should download the file, be patient, it may take several minutes for the zip file to download.




After downloading and extracting the installation package, you will see the Apache 2.0 license and two folders, blog and install. You now need to step back and make a choice what folder structure you want on your own blog. Do you want the blog in the root directory, or in a different folder? This is an important consideration before you move forward. If you don't plan this correctly and change your mind at a later time, you're going to have to start everything over. For example, I have two installations of Galaxie Blog, one installation is found under www.gregoryalexander.com where I have other sites. My own personal site takes precedence and is installed in the root directory, and Galaxie Blog is stored in the www.gregoryalexander.com/blog folder. However, my test blog site is installed under the www.gregorysblog.org URL. Here, it makes no sense to create a blog folder- typing in www.gregorysblog.org/blog/ is redundant, so I store the blog in the root directory. When a user navigates to the gregorysblog.org URL, they immediately see the blog without having to type in an extraneous folder. Once you determine the structure of your blog, rename the blog folder to anything that you would like. If you want to install the blog in your root folder, copy and paste all of the files outside of the blog folder- and then remove the blog folder. You don't need to keep the same structure that was in place that you downloaded. Galaxie Blog will adjust the paths as necessary when running the web based installer. Upload the files
After you have the structure that you want, upload all of these files to your web server using your preferred ftp client. It is a large package, and it will take some time. Run the installer
Once the files have been uploaded to your own web server, you need to navigate to the installer. Unless you have renamed or removed the blog folder, the default path would be '/blog/installer/'. If you changed the default structure, navigate to the 'installer' folder on your website. Once you have navigated to the installer, A 'welcome' screen should appear. Read through it and click on the 'get started' button at the end of the page. You will be asked whether to continue or cancel. Unless you know what you're doing and have a previously installed version of BlogCfc or Galaxie Blog, click on the continue link inside this page. After clicking on the continue link, you will be asked to enter the DSN and Crypto settings. You will need to get the database information from your hosting provider, or server administrator. Unless you have a really good reason to change the security algorithms, leave the 'Crypto' settings as is. Once the DSN information is entered, click on the 'Verify and continue' button.



Step 3 will ask you a question. If you have never installed BlogCfc or Galaxie Blog, click on the 'set up my database'. If you have a working BlogCfc or Galaxie Blog database, click on the 'move to settings' button.

The next screen is more complex. Here you will be asked to provide additional settings. The 2nd setting is important. Enter the name of the the exact URL that points to your blog, along with the index.cfm page that is placed by default into the /blog/ folder (domain name + /blog/index.cfm). In my installation on the gregoryalexander.com site, the URL is http://www.gregoryalexander.com/blog/index.cfm. On my test server, where I eliminated the 'blog' folder and put everything in the root directory, the URL is http://www.gregorysblog/index.cfm. If you only allow SSL, replace 'http' with 'https'. You will have to contact your hosting provider or server administrator in order to enter the email settings. Keep the default settings in the drop down menu's, and click on the 'save settings' button.


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This entry was posted on June 10, 2019 at 2:30 PM and has received 1278 views.