From Fedora Project Wiki

Revision as of 05:57, 5 December 2011 by Sundaram (talk | contribs) (remove draft notice)

The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.
Shortcut:
ISOP:ASKFEDORA

To set up http://ask.fedoraproject.org based on Askbot as a question and answer support forum for the Fedora community. A devel instance could be seen at http://ask01.dev.fedoraproject.org and the staging instance is at http://ask.stg.fedoraproject.org/

This page describes how to set up and customize it from scratch.

Contact Information

Owner: Fedora Infrastructure Team

Contact: #fedora-admin

Persons: mether pjp

Sponsor: nirik

Location: phx2

Servers: ask01 , ask01.stg, ask01.dev

Purpose: To host Ask Fedora

Creating database

We use the postgresql database backend. To add the database to a postgresql server:

# psql -U postgres

postgres# create user askfedora with password 'xxx';

postgres# create database askfedora;

postgres# ALTER DATABASE askfedora owner to askfedora;

postgres# \q;

Now setup the db tables if this is a new install:

python manage.py syncdb
python manage.py migrate askbot
python manage.py migrate django_authopenid #embedded login application

Setting up the forum

Askbot is packaged and available in Rawhide, Fedora 16 and EPEL 6. On a RHEL 6 system, you need to install EPEL 6 repo first.

 # yum install askbot

The /etc/askbot/sites/ask/conf/settings.py file should look something like:

 DATABASE_ENGINE = 'postgresql_psycopg2'
 DATABASE_NAME = 'testaskbot'
 DATABASE_USER = 'askbot'
 DATABASE_PASSWORD = 'xxxxx'
 DATABASE_HOST = '127.0.0.1'
 DATABASE_PORT = '5432'
 # Outgoing mail server settings
 #
 DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'askfedora@fedoraproject.org'
 EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX = '[Askfedora]'
 EMAIL_HOST='127.0.0.1'
 EMAIL_PORT='25'
 # This variable points to the Askbot plugin which will be used for user
 # authentication.  Not enabled yet because we don't need FAS auth but use Fedora id as a openid provider. 
 #
 # ASKBOT_CUSTOM_AUTH_MODULE = 'authfas'


Now Ask Fedora website should be accessible from the browser.

Adding administrators

As of Askbot version 0.7.21, the first user who logs in automatically becomes the administrator. In previous versions, you have to do the following.

 # cd /etc/askbot/sites/ask/conf/
 # python manage.py add_admin 1
   Do you really wish to make user (id=1, name=pjp) a site administrator? yes/no: yes

Once a user is marked as a administrator, he or she can go into anyone's profile, go the "moderation" tab in the end and mark them as administrator or moderator as well as block or suspend a user.

Change settings within the forum

  • Data entry and display:

Disable "Allow asking questions anonymously"

Enable "Force lowercase the tags"

Change "Format of tag list" to "cloud"

Change "Minimum length of search term for Ajax search" to "3"

Change "Number of questions to list by default" to "50"

Change "What should "unanswered question" mean?" to "Question has no answers"

  • Email and email alert settings

Change "Default news notification frequency" to "Instantly"

  • Flatpages - about, privacy policy, etc.

Change "Text of the Q&A forum About page (html format)" to the following

Ask Fedora provides a community edited knowledge base and support forum for the Fedora community. Make sure you read the FAQ and search for existing questions before asking yours. If you want to provide feedback, just a question in this site! Tag your questions "meta" to highlight your questions to the administrators of Ask Fedora.

  • Login provider settings

Disable "Activate local login"

  • Q&A forum website parameters and urls

Change "Site title for the Q&A forum" to "Ask Fedora: Community Knowledge Base and Support Forum"

Change "Comma separated list of Q&A site keywords" to "Ask Fedora, forum, community, support, help"

Change "Copyright message to show in the footer" to "All content is under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License. Ask Fedora is community maintained and Red Hat or Fedora Project is not responsible for content"

Change "Site description for the search engines" to "Ask Fedora: Community Knowledge Base and Support Forum"

Change "Short name for your Q&A forum" to "Ask Fedora"

Change "Base URL for your Q&A forum, must start with http or https" to "http://ask.fedoraproject.org"

  • Sidebar widget settings - main page

Disable "Show avatar block in sidebar"

Disable "Show tag selector in sidebar"

  • Skin and User Interface settings

Upload "Q&A site logo"

Upload "Site favicon". Must be a ICO format file because that is the only one IE supports as a fav icon .

Enable "Apply custom style sheet (CSS)"

Upload the following custom CSS

#ab-main-nav a {
color: #333333;
background-color: #d8dfeb;
border: 1px solid #888888;
border-bottom: none;
padding: 0px 12px 3px 12px;
height: 25px;
line-height: 30px;
margin-right: 10px;
font-size: 18px;
font-weight: 100;
text-decoration: none;
display: block;
float: left;
}

#ab-main-nav a.on {
height: 24px;
line-height: 28px;
border-bottom: 1px solid #0a57a4;
border-right: 1px solid #0a57a4;
border-top: 1px solid #0a57a4;
border-left: 1px solid #0a57a4; /*background:#A31E39; */
background: #0a57a4;
color: #FFF;
font-weight: 800;
text-decoration: none
}

#ab-main-nav a.special {
font-size: 18px;
color: #072b61;
font-weight: bold;
text-decoration: none;
}

/* tabs stuff */
.tabsA { float: right; }
.tabsC { float: left; }
 
.tabsA a.on, .tabsC a.on, .tabsA a:hover, .tabsC a:hover {
background: #fff;
color: #072b61;
border-top: 1px solid #babdb6;
border-left: 1px solid #babdb6;
border-right: 1px solid #888a85;
border-bottom: 1px solid #888a85;
height: 24px;
line-height: 26px;
margin-top: 3px;
}
 
.tabsA a.rev.on, tabsA a.rev.on:hover {
padding: 0px 2px 0px 7px;
}
 
.tabsA a, .tabsC a{
background: #f9f7eb;
border-top: 1px solid #eeeeec;
border-left: 1px solid #eeeeec;
border-right: 1px solid #a9aca5;
border-bottom: 1px solid #888a85;
color: #888a85;
display: block;
float: left;
height: 20px;
line-height: 22px;
margin: 5px 0 0 4px;
padding: 0 7px;
text-decoration: none;
}
 
.tabsA .label, .tabsC .label {
float: left;
font-weight: bold;
color: #777;
margin: 8px 0 0 0px;
}
 
.tabsB a {
background: #eee;
border: 1px solid #eee;
color: #777;
display: block;
float: left;
height: 22px;
line-height: 28px;
margin: 5px 0px 0 4px;
padding: 0 11px 0 11px;
text-decoration: none;
}

a {
color: #072b61;
text-decoration: none;
cursor: pointer;
}

div.side-box
{
width:200px;
padding:10px;
border:3px solid #CCCCCC;
margin:0px;
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #DDDDDD, #FFFFFF);
}

Debugging

Set DEBUG to True in settings.py file and restart Apache.