Drag & Drop Site Creator (DDSC) now comes with an installation wizard that automates the majority of the installation process.

The requirements for DDSC are:

Required:

• A dedicated domain or subdomain.
• A MySQL database.
• PHP 4.3 or higher.
• An Ioncube-ready web server.
• GD2 php extension or Netpbm
• FTP php extension.

Optional but suggested:

• Zip php extension or the command-line version of unzip.
• CURL php extension.

Drag & Drop Site Creator latest version is available at:

http://dragdropsitecreator.com/

DDSC needs its own domain or subdomain. Refer to your control panel documentation or contact your administrator for instructions on setting up a subdomain on your server.

Log into your cPanel control panel.

Click on the Subdomains button.

In the entry box type: sitecreator and click on the add button.

Log into your Ensim control panel

Click on subdomain in the left-hand main menu.

Click on “Create a new subdomain” and type: sitecreator.yourdomain.com

Unzip the .zip or .tar.gz file and upload the extracted files to your web server using your preferred FTP client. Its important to use a FTP client that let you change files permissions.

DDSC needs to be installed at the root (top-level directory) of your domain or subdomain’s web site. If you install DDSC inside a sub directory it may not function correctly.

When you finish uploading, you should have the following files and directories at the root of your web site:

 admin/
 pas/
 setup/
 www/
 index.php

At this point, you can start the installation wizard at:

 http://sitecreator.yourdomain.com/
 or
 http://yourdomain.com/

The installation wizard will ask you to make certain directories writeable by the web server.

If you have shell access (ssh or telnet), the simplest method is to log in and run the command “chmod 777 /home/user/directory” from the shell command-line. For example:

  chmod 777 www/tmp

If you do not not have a shell account you can assign proper permissions to directories using your FTP client. The exact method varies between programs.

Changing permissions with CuteFTP

 Select the directory
 Press CTRL+SHIFT+A
 Enter 777 in the text box
 Press OK

Changing permissions with WS_FTP

 Right click on the directory
 Choose the chmod UNIX option
 In the dialog that appeared check all the checkboxes
 Press OK

Deciding which level of database privileges to give DDSC is an important step.

You have two options. - You can set up a normal, low-privileges database user for DDSC. If you do this, you will need to create new users and databases manually in the database every time they are needed. - You can create a user for DDSC with high-level, administrative privileges. If you do this, DDSC will transparently create users and databases for you automatically whenever they are needed. This setup works very well when sites are created and hosted on the same server.

Giving administrative MySQL privileges to DDSC increases security risk on your server.

Use phpMyAdmin or your control panel to create a database (sitecreator) with its own username (ddsc) and a password.<br/> That user will be your DDSC adminstrative user, and will need all privileges on the sitecreator database.

To add privileges using the MySQL command-line, for:

  Server: localhost
  Database: sitecreator
  Username: ddsc
  Password: mypassword

The sql syntax would be:

CREATE DATABASE `sitecreator`;
GRANT USAGE ON * . * TO 'ddsc'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword' ;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `sitecreator` . * TO 'ddsc'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION ;

For DDSC to create MySQL databases and users automatically, it needs to have a high level of privileges, including the GRANT option.

In phpMyAdmin you can give these privileges as shown here:

On the command-line, you can use:

REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON * . * FROM 'sitecreator'@'localhost';
 
GRANT SELECT ,
INSERT ,
UPDATE ,
DELETE ,
CREATE ,
DROP ,
RELOAD ,
PROCESS ,
FILE ,
REFERENCES ,
INDEX ,
ALTER ,
SHOW DATABASES ,
SUPER ,
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ,
LOCK TABLES ,
EXECUTE ON * . * TO 'sitecreator'@ 'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

DDSC will work right out of the box, but to make it more secure we strongly suggest you set some directory restrictions in your apache config.

In your setup/ folder you will find a sample configuration file: ddsc_apache_directory_directive.conf This file needs to be customized: change the directories in the file to match the actual directories on your server. Then copy and paste the file contents into your apache configuration file (httpd.conf).

Apache configuration sample

The standard installation will not work in a phpsuexec or PHP cgi environment. So you will neet to use the cpanel_phpsuexec_ddsc_apache.conf file and copy and customize the php.ini for each folders: admin, vhosts and www.

In the set of instructions bellow replace the “websiteuser” by the username of the user your curently installing dragdropsitecreator in. (ex: /home/websiteuser/ )

• File ownership setup, from install sitecreator/ directory

   chown websiteuser:websiteuser * -R

• Make sure all files have permissions of 644

  find * -type f -exec chmod 0644 {} \;

• Make sure all directories have permissions of 755

  find * -type d -exec chmod 0755 {} \;

• You will need to copy the php.ini file from /usr/local/Zend/etc in

  sitecreator/admin/php.ini
  sitecreator/vhosts/php.ini
  sitecreator/www/php.ini

• Edit the php.ini in sitecreator/vhosts/php.ini. Turn on the following:

  safe_mode               =       On
  open_basedir = "."

• Edit php.ini in sitecreator/admin/php.ini and sitecreator/www/php.ini:

  safe_mode               =       Off

• Create an absolute symlink to the php.ini in sitecreator/vhosts for new projects. The php.ini in vhosts must be own by root.

  cd sitecreator/pas/sitetemplate/
  ln -s /home/websiteuser/sitecreator/vhosts/php.ini php.ini

• delete the .htaccess files in sitecreator/admin/ and sitecreator/www

  rm sitecreator/admin/.htaccess
  rm sitecreator/www/.htaccess

• Edit to customize the apache conf for phpcgi and add it to your apache configuration.

  ddsc_apache_directory_directive_phpcgi.conf

If you get:

 Premature end of script headers: /home/youruser/public_html/sitecreator/admin/install.php

This means the files is set with group and other writable permission where it should be only the user (youruser) that can write the script.

mod_security will block a some of the links in www and admin If you get the following error: “FileNotFound”, and “Forbidden” Errors:

Examples:

 http://admin.sitecreator.yourdomain.com/reseller_manageusers.php
 then click the "FTP" link.
 http://www.sitecreator.yourdomain.com.com/dragdropsitecreator_intro.swf
 "Not Found"

This is a sign of pages blocked by mod_security. To turn mod_security off in admin and www add in their respective virtual domain:

 <IfModule mod_security.c>
    # Turn the filtering engine On or Off
    SecFilterEngine Off
 </  IfModule>

Most of the php version works out of the box with ioncube without further installation settings. Bellow a few settings for the ioncube loaded if you get into trouble with the auto loading feature.

At the end of your php.ini files add:

  zend_extension = /<path>/sitecreator/ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.2.so

The 5.2 is your php version number so if you have php 4.4 install it will be:

  zend_extension = /<path>/sitecreator/ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_4.4.so

<path> is the full path to your sitecreator installation.

By default DDSC uses the GD2 php module for image manipulation. Its the simplest way to enable images manipulations and the standard for all the open source image gallery packages.

If you cannot install GD2 you will need to download an external image libraries. We have created a customized version of netpbm.

GD2 in a graphic library part of the core distribution of PHP4. Its a module that you can enable from your php.ini In debian, redhat, suse, slackware you will need the appropriate package, often called php4-gd or php5-gd

On a debian base distribution you whould do

  apt-get install php4-gd

Log into your WHM and click on the apache update. It will list php and all the associated module check the GD2 module and click build.

You can download a customized version of netpbm for Drag & Drop Site creator at:<br/> http://www.paspagebuilder.com/downloads/netpbm_ddsc.tar.gz

Unzip the file:

 tar -zcvf netpbm_ddsc.tar.gz -C /usr/local/

Then adjust your apache setup:

#if safe mode is turn on, uncomment bellow:
#php_admin_value safe_mode_exec_dir "/usr/local/netpbm_ddsc/"
 
# Minimum required security to block users from accessing others web site files using PHP scripts:
php_admin_value open_basedir ".:/server/vhtdocs/sitecreator/ioncube/:/usr/local/netpbm_ddsc/"

The free version of DDSC comes with a 2 user license that will automatically self-register. You can begin using DDSC immediately.

If you would like additional users, you may purchase licenses at http://www.dragdropsitecreator.com/puchasepage_cp.php

If you have purchased additional users, you must activate your license as follows:

Log into http://www.dragdropsitecreator.com/ Go to your License Manager and enter the following information to generate your license key:

• IP Address 1, IP Address 2: The IP addresses of your domain or subdomain.

• Domain name: This is the domain name of the server where DDSC will be installed. It should start with “sitecreator”, e.g. sitecreator.yourdomain.com

Click on the “Generate the license” link. You will receive the license key by email: the attachment “.ht_keyfile.inc.php” is your license key.

You can then replace the 2 user license key (also named “.ht_keyfile.inc.php” at the root (top-level directory) of your DDSC installation.

Here are a few pointers on getting started with DDSC. You can get more information on the following pages:

• Admin control panel
• User documentation

The first thing to do is set up your account. Log into the admin control panel at:

  http://sitecreator.yourdomain.com/admin/

Then select “Your information” and tner your personal information and username and password to access the admin control panel.

To add a user click on the “Create Users” link and fill in the form on the following page. To authorize the user to log into his account you will need to check the “Enable User” check box.

To log in as this user simply go to the main url of your site and log in with the username and password you’ve just choosen:

 http://sitecreator.yourdomain.com/