ForwardTrack Installation

Support

If you need tech support, please get it via the Sourceforge.net support forums:
http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=115464

Installation Instructions

note: we are trying to significantly simplify the installation process. Forthcoming releases will have a an easier install methodology, but we wanted to put the beta out for people to play around with. Please stay tuned to the ForwardTrack website, or join the ForwardTrack mailing list to stay up to date.

note: all references in this file to specifc documents are relative to the root directory of the ForwardTrack distribution, where the root directory is called ft

  1. Edit the file ft/.htaccess according to the comments in that file. In particular, you may need to modify the RewriteBase and AcceptPathInfo settings.

  2. If you want to track any impact metrics other than simple user/registration counts, read about impact metrics in ForwardTrack and create a custom .ini file accordingly.

  3. Edit the file ft/config.inc.php with your configuration information:

    FT_DB_HOST
    Host where your MySQL server is located, often "localhost".
    FT_DB_USER, FT_DB_PASS
    Database user account and password. Be sure that the database user you set up has create, drop, alter, select, insert, update and delete privileges on the ForwardTrack database.
    FT_DB_DBNAME
    Name of your database.
    FT_DEFAULT_CAMPAIGN
    This feature is depracated. Default campaign is selected within the application.
    FT_MAIL_TYPE
    Type of PHP mailer object to use (mail or smtp).
    FT_MAIL_FROM
    Address non-campaign-specific messages will come from. Also used for campaigns that don't have a specified email address.
    FT_ERROR_RETURN_MAIL
    Address that mail messages should have errors redirected to.
    FT_INVITE_HONEST_FROM
    In person-to-person invitations, don't fake the From: header (less risk of SPAM filtering).
    FT_OPT_OUT_FINAL
    Set this to 1 to enable the feature that allows users to opt out of all emails coming from the system.
    FT_CUSTOM_INI_FILE
    Absolute path on disk to the custom .ini file for your ForwardTrack installation, if you are using one. Mostly used to control the impact metrics you are tracking, and the DB table prefixes.
    FT_MAP_ALL_METRICS
    Set this to 1 to aggregate all metrics into map-data. Just around for efficiency if you are only going to be mapping the 'count' of registrations.
    FT_ADMIN_HTTPAUTH_NAME, FT_ADMIN_HTTPAUTH_PASS
    login/password for optional http-level authentication on administrative functions of ForwardTrack web application
    FT_DEBUG_LEVEL
    Debug printout level. Leave at 0 unless you are debugging.
    FT_*_CLASS
    Classes to use for implementing/extending ForwardTrack application functionality. They are configurable in case you want to subclass and modify the standard functions (only for experts). See more info about this in the documentation on extending ForwardTrack

    All of these variables are further documented in the ft/config.inc.php file itself

  4. Upload the entire source tree to wherever on your server you want ForwardTrack

  5. On your server, make sure the directory ft/cache is world-writeable (chmod a+rwx cache).

  6. Load the page http://{your server}/{wherever you put ForwardTrack}/admin/install/. Click the button.

    This will create all the necessary database tables to support the ForwardTrack core and applications. It will also create a fake/test campaign in your installation so that you can test the system before preparing all of the content for your campaign(s).

  7. Go back to the main documentation page to learn more about using the system.

Upgrade Instructions

To upgrade your database schema, apply all the .sql files in the upgrade directory to your database, starting from the one labeled with the version your are currently running.