Introduction to PHP-Nuke
Purpose
This book is born as a "thank you" to all the users who visit spaghettibrain [www.spaghettibrain.com]. There has always been the necessity to have a definitive guide on PHP-Nuke, possibly in Italian language. Due to time constraints, nobody has ever had the will to carry out this operation.
What Is PHP-Nuke
PHP-Nuke is free software, released under the GNU License.
It is a CMS (Content Managment System) that integrates in its inside all the instruments that are used to create a site/portal of information (meant in broad sense). Given the immense number of present functions in the installation and in an even greater quantity of modules developed from third parties, the system is also adept to the management of
PHP-Nuke utilizes as hinge of its own structure the duo PHP+ MySQL, very often being accompanied by the Apache web server. Many modules have integrated many other languages, such as Javascript, Java, Flash and also even systems that serve, through the portal, sounds and films in streaming mode(Online Radio, TV Online, Images, Files...)
PHP-Nuke is developed with a particular eye to the suggestions of the W3C, in its origin, the code is in fact W3C compliant and one has validated both the code and the style sheets. It is then up to the user who intends to create a portal to adhere to these standards during the modification of the graphics or the intrinsic characteristics of the system.
The personalisation either of the graphical, or of the programming part has only a single limit, the fantasy and capability of the programer and web designer.The presence of many PHP-Nuke sites similar to each other is due mainly to the lack of time of those who created them or the fear that the phase of personalisation is too difficult on a technical level. In fact, it suffices to let oneself be inspired by the available themes, in order to realize how easy it is to sew a new dress to onIt is s portal.
Francisco Burzi, father and mother of PHP-Nuke, describes his creation as follows:
PHP-Nuke is a Web Portal System, storytelling software, News system, online community or whatever you want to call it. The goal of PHP-Nuke is to have an automated web site to distribute news and articles with users system. Each user can submit comments to discuss the articles, just similar to Slashdot and many others.
Main features include: web based admin, surveys, top page, access stats page with counter, user customizable box, themes manager for registered users, friendly administration GUI with graphic topic manager, option to edit or delete stories, option to delete comments, moderation system, Referers page to know who link us, sections manager, customizable HTML blocks, user and authors edit, an integrated Banners Ads system, search engine, backend/headlines generation (RSS/RDF format), and many, many more friendly functions.
PHP-Nuke is written 100% in PHP and requires Apache Web server, PHP and a SQL (MySQL, mSQL, PostgreSQL, ODBC, ODBC_Adabas, Sybase or Interbase). Support for 25 languages, Yahoo like search engine, Comments option in Polls, lot of themes, Ephemerids manager, File Manager, Headlines, download manager, faq manager, advanced blocks systems, reviews system, newsletter, categorized articles, multilanguage content management and a lot more.
Short history of PHP-Nuke
Francisco Burzi, describes the history of PHP-Nuke as follows:
PHP-Nuke is a free software, released under the GNU GPL License, version 2.0. PHP-Nuke is the result of many years administrating a news site called Linux Preview. First, around August 1998, I wrote my own code in Perl called NUKE and used it for about 1 year, then my site grew big, so I needed a more powerfull system and decided to use Slash, the same used in the Slashdot site. It's good, but you realy need to know Perl to modify it, need too many modules, need to load a damn daemon that sucks all your CPU power. My Pentium III just appears to be a 386 each minute the daemon make its work.
Well, then I discovered Thatware, a good project to have a news site under PHP. I learned PHP in less than a week and began modifying it. There are too many mods to mention, it was practicaly a rewrite. I added some cool stuff, deleted some others and after more than 380 hours of hard work in 3 weeks! PHP-Nuke was born.
On August 17, 2000 I sold LinuxPreview.org to LinuxAlianza.com and now I have all the time to dedicate to the development of PHP-Nuke.
From January 2001 to January 2002, PHP-Nuke has been financially supported by MandrakeSoft, the folks that made Mandrake Linux. This gave me and PHP-Nuke a lot of oxygen and made possible a lot of stuff.
Now, I'm alone with this killer project. There is a lot of help from the people that use and develop modules and themes. Now, phpnuke.org is a big site with a lot of users and helpful information for any user around the world. There are also strong users community sites in almost any language you can imagine. Just go to phpnuke.org and enjoy this great community!
The Nuke Communities
A careful look is due to the true value of PHP-Nuke, that is the communities that you will find all around. Thanks to the voluntary job of these persons, of these sites, PHP-Nuke has become a well-known system and it is always thanks to them that PHP-Nuke is a multilanguage system that supports more than 25 languages.
Even the modules have been created mostly from developers in external communities and have, in second round, been included in new distributions of PHP-Nuke.
There are communities out there who are solely devoted to the creation of new graphical themes of PHP-Nuke, to technical support, file mirroring as well as a real lot of multilingual communities that take care of their members informing them in their local language, thus creating new personal ties and more focused projects.
Communities in Italian language:
Thanks to the work of these portals and single persons we have more than 500 different modules that may be used to personalize our portal, from the weather one to the e-commerce, the gallery of images to the chat realized in flash to the videogames in Java included in the layout of PHP-Nuke. Projects of particular interest are: Splatt.it (Forum for PHP-Nuke), PHP Proxima (visual management of the layout of PHP-Nuke).
Why use PHP-Nuke and not static HTML pages
Copyright 2003