Food and Water

Very little has to be done to keep the website operational. This information covers the technical aspects, the addition and update of content is described elsewhere, see for example FAQ and How to.

Backups

WCN do not provide backups of the website, this is the responsibility of the website owner. Having said that they have not lost any data yet (based on TTC usage from 1999).

The simplest method of backing up the website is to upload it to a PC using ftp software. FileZilla is recommended for this purpose.

• Currently a backup is held by the webmaster.
• Backup regularly somewhere between monthly and annually

To backup

• backup the pmwiki pages and installation, and the uploaded files
  • using an ftp client transfer everything in the pmwiki directory and below from the WCN server to local storage
  • using an ftp client transfer everything in the pmwikiuploads directory and below from the WCN server to local storage
• if required archive this data to a CD or DVD, compressing if necessary.

Software updates

WCN keep the server software, which includes the Apache HTTP webserver and PHP, up to date.

The PmWiki content management software needs to be kept updated by the webmaster.

• Update once or twice a year
• Current version is pmwiki-2.2.35

The process is straight forward:

• download the software
• review the release notes and change log
• check the installation instructions
• unzip the downloaded archive, this will greate a folder with a number of subfolders and files
• upload by ftp the contents of the pmwiki folder to the pmwiki folder on the WCN server

In addition the extensions (or recipes) need to be updated.

• download the most recent version of the recipe
• review its installation instructions
• upload by ftp to the cookbook folder and other folders as required by the recipe's installation instructions

See

• PmWiki:Site Analyzer and PmWiki:Analyze Results
• Cookbook:Recipe Check

 

New file directories

The file structure of the website is illustrated above. Each group of pages, and each page of attached (uploaded) files has its own directory.

When a new group (of pages) is created, or files are uploaded (Attached) the permissions on the directory need to be set. This is because WCN run a very secure and locked down server.

To create a new directory use the FileZilla create directory option. Then change the directory permissions to 777, as shown.

Email addresses

WCN provides email redirection using qmail. For each email address used a file with the name .qmail-emailaddress is created in the hvnzda directory. For example the branch's contact email address has the file .qmail-hunter_enquiry. Each of these files contains one or more email addresses to which the original email is redirected. A special file, if present, .qmail-default, will direct emails to all addresses not specifically defined as required (this means it may receive spam).

Currently the following email addresses exist

• hunter_enquiry
• hvnzda-webmaster

Thus it would be easy to, for example, add email addresses for each of the branch's officers.

Tip: when uploading .qmail files to the server you must transfer them in ASCII mode (this is the default in FileZilla 3).

See also http://lifewithqmail.org/

Deleting files

Normally there is no need to delete files from the server. If it is absolutely necessary to delete files such as photos or uploaded documents from storage rather than not displaying them on a page this is done using FTP (file transfer protocol).

The philosophy for the website is not to delete stuff. A page of older 'archival' files or photos can be maintained if you want to keep them available.

Galleries are retained for ever, just add new gallery pages using a naming convention, eg "2008-12-31-Trip-X"