PublicLab.org

A complete rewrite of the Public Lab website on a new platform, with a whole new look. Rails, Bootstrap; intended to:

• boast more usable, friendly, but also more powerful interfaces
• simplify and refine common tasks like posting research notes and filtering spam
• enable faster development (based on Ruby on Rails and Twitter's Bootstrap frameworks)
• completely revise and streamline "following" other contributors or specific keywords, with email alerts
• work on tablets, smartphones, and in recent versions of Internet Explorer

###Key new features:

• new simpler/faster note posting form
• vastly improved advanced search
• fast and easy auto-complete search
• faster, nicer wiki revision interface
• revamped integrated subscriptions interface
• events and mailing list info for place wiki pages
• recent notes, wiki pages, and active contributors per topic in page sidebar
• easy tag-based pages
• "follow" and "star" for each page
• new simplified/improved wiki editing form
• sorting and prioritization of notes and pages by popularity metric

##Prerequisites

Recommended; for an Ubuntu/Debian system. Varies slightly for mac/fedora/etc

Install a database, if necessary. We use mysql -- we're not adverse to others, but this is what we've built it on.

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Application-specific dependencies:

sudo apt-get install bundler libmysqlclient-dev imagemagick ruby-rmagick

Install rvm for Ruby management (http://rvm.io)

curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable

Note: At this point during the process, you may want to log out and log back in, or open a new terminal window; RVM will then properly load in your environment.

Ubuntu users: You may need to enable Run command as a login shell in Ubuntu's Terminal, under Profile Preferences > Title and Command. Then close the terminal and reopen it. You may also want to run source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm to load RVM.

Then, use RVM to install version 2.1.2 of Ruby. (v1.9.3+ should also work):

rvm install 2.1.2

You'll also need bower which is available through NPM. To install NPM, you can run:

sudo apt-get install npm

However, on Ubuntu, you may need to also install the nodejs-legacy package, as due to a naming collision, some versions of Ubuntu already have an unrelated package called node. To do this, run:

sudo apt-get install nodejs-legacy

On Debian Wheezy, you may need instead to:

• Run sudo apt-get -t wheezy-backports install nodejs as the npm package may not be available.
• Then run sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/node nodejs /usr/bin/nodejs 100 to make it available under the name node -- similarly to what we do for Ubuntu, above.
• Finally, run curl -0 -L https://www.npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh

Once NPM is installed, you should be able to run:

sudo npm install -g bower

##Installation

Installation steps:

1. In the console, download a copy of the source with git clone https://github.com/publiclab/plots2.git or git clone [email protected]:publiclab/plots2.git.
2. cd plots2 to enter the new 'plots2' directory.
3. Install gems with bundle install from the rails root folder. You may need to run bundle update if you have older gems in your environment.
4. Copy and configure config/database.yml from config/database.yml.example, using a new empty databse you've created. A quick command you could use is: cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml. You can then use your favorite editor to edit the config/database.yml file.
5. Grant database creation permissions to your username.
6. Initialize database with bundle exec rake db:setup

• if there are any errors, try one of these two fixes:
  • run rake db:migrate
  • OR
  • in MySQL, drop database XXX; for each database in config/database.yml and then try rake db:setup again

7. rake db:seed to populate it with initial dummy data
8. Install static assets (like external javascript libraries, fonts) with bower install
9. Start rails with bundle exec passenger start from the Rails root and open http://localhost:3000 in a web browser. (For some, just passenger start will work; adding bundle exec ensures you're using the version of passenger you just installed with Bundler.) You may use passenger start -a 0.0.0.0 -p 3000 -d -e production to run production version and access it via publicly accessibly IP address.
10. Wheeeee!

##Bugs and support

To report bugs and request features, please use the GitHub issue tracker provided at https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues

For additional support, join the Public Lab website and mailing list at http://publiclab.org/lists or for urgent requests, email [email protected]

##Developers

Help improve Public Lab software!

• Join the '[email protected]' discussion list to get involved
• Look for open issues at https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues
• Review contributor guidelines at http://publiclab.org/wiki/contributing-to-public-lab-software
• Some devs hang out in http://publiclab.org/chat (irc webchat)