What are the minimum system requirements for installing and running Advokit?
Submitted by patdunlavey on Thu, 06/22/2006 - 09:25.
AdvoKit Users
Advokit is a web-server based application designed to run on LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) systems. Most parts of Advokit will run successfully on Windows and Macintosh systems that are configured with an Apache web server, PHP 4.2.8 or above, and MySQL 4.1 or above (e.g. XAMPP in Windows). You will need access to a shell account on the server in order to run the voterfile import script (also see Perl libraries requirement below).
(from the 1.0.0 README.txt file...)
ADVOKIT INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS:
* Apache/IIS
Advokit has been tested on the Apache and IIS webservers, but will
probably run on any server that supports PHP.
* PHP
Your webserver must be running PHP 4.2.8 or above.
You DO NOT need to have register_globals on for Advokit to work.
* MySQL
MySQL version 4.1 or higher must be installed.
* Smarty
The Smarty template engine must be installed. Preferably 2.6.2 or
above. Advokit was mostly developed with version 2.0, but 2.3 and
2.6.2 have been used extensively. 2.6.2 is bundled with this release,
and you can tell the installer to install it for you automatically.
* Perl libraries
The voterfile import script requires several Perl libraries. See
this forum topic if import.pl fails to compile when you run it.
A couple options
Submitted by patdunlavey on Thu, 04/19/2007 - 17:43.
Setting up on a web hosting service is not difficult if you are comfortable around web servers and can deal with the garden-variety trouble-shooting that invariably is needed. The system requirements listed above constitute something of a "shopping list" when you look at hosting services. Note, I'm not referring to them as "ISPs". ISPs (the folks who provide your internet access in your home or office) may also host websites, but usually do not provide things like MySQL databases, PHP and shell accounts that are needed to install and operate Advokit - at least not in their basic service package.
If you'd rather not be bothered with all that, I'm hosting a few small to medium-sized Advokit instances and would be happy to host yours (for a tolerable fee). Contact pat at communitycampaigns dot net.
Any suggestions?
Questions from a newbie:
Any suggestions as to how to find a host for Advokit data?
Should I just contact any ISP?
The database will be a voter file for a small city with about 40,000 residents and 25,000 voters.
Only a few people will be accessing the data for a City Council race.