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Video of the Day: Table of Contents (version 0.0.2)



Video of the Day: Installation


This will cover how to install Video of the Day using the Windows executable installation file: votd.exe which and can be found within the votd.zip available for download within the members area. An animated version of the installation process is available on calmdev.com

In order to successfully install this software you will need to have access to the following services and utilities: Web Server, FTP Server, MySQL, PHP and ImageMagick.

Note: votd.zip contains your license file.

Below is an explanation of each form field set encountered during installation process:

  • FTP login: The installer uses FTP to upload the application to your server. The FTP Login group of fields receive data which allow the installer to connect to the server. Enter in FTP Server Address the name of the server (the FTP host), for example ftp.mysite.com, or else the IP address of the server if you have that information. Enter the username and password for your account on this host.
  • Installation location on FTP server: Contains fields which determine where on the target FTP server the application will be installed. All the application files will be saved in the package folder `votd`. The package folder will be created inside the folder specified by the Package Install Folder field. This latter field should be the root path of your domain.
  • Web server settings: The installer will need to access the application being installed via the web. The application will be uploaded to an FTP server, so the URL of the web server corresponding to the FTP server needs to be entered on this page. Often it is possible to work out the correct URL automatically, and the installer will attempt to make a guess. If the Installation location URL field has been filled in, then you should just click the Next button to proceed to the next page of the installer.
  • Ready to install: Check you have entered the correct server settings, then click the Next button on the installer to start the file transfer, or click Back to modify settings on previous pages.
  • Installation wizard completed: This page is reached once the installation has completed.

Once the installation wizard has completed, you'll be prompted to click 'Finish' and configure Video of the Day. At this point a new web browser window will open automatically. If not, open one and visit the post installation url http://mydomain.com/votd/install/. You will now be presented with a "License not found. Please visit, www.calmdev.com for further details and support." message. At this point you'll need to upload your license file (license.inc.php - contained within votd.zip) to the '/votd/' folder on your server, which was created by the installer.

Once the license file has been uploaded, refresh the post installation url. You'll then be presented an interactive post installation form. You're now ready to start the post installation software configuration.

Video of the Day: Post Installation Configuration


This section covers how to configure Video of the Day. Before proceeding with this part of the documentation, ensure that you have successfully installed the software using the installation wizard as described in the previous chapter. Once you've verified completeness of the installation, you may continue reading. An animated version of this process is available for download on calmdev.com

Note: If FTP permissions are not available during the time of installation, you willl be asked to manually set the required file and folder permissions during the post installation process. Otherwise, you should not receive any permission notices.

If you're unsure about MySQL information, please contact your server administrator or web host. The individual or company who manages the server will be able to provide you with a host, database, username and password. After the form has been submitted you'll need to add a working the FTP server. Click the 'FTP Servers' icon located to the right of the task menu bar. Once you've reached this page, click 'New FTP Server' on the subtask menu to add a server.

Note: When editing an FTP Servers settings, if the server is unavailable, you'll notice a slight delay of no more than 10 seconds. This is due to the unavailability of the FTP server and Video of the Day attempting to establish the connection. Once the page has finished resolving there will be a message informing you of the FTP servers connection status - 'unavailable', or 'available' if a connection can be established. As a safeguard, you can't delete any FTP connections that are associated with movies within Video of the Day.

The FTP server form fields are explained below:

  • Title: Provides a way for you to identify the content server. You should use a unique name.
  • IP address: Enter either the domain or ip address that points to the ftp server.
  • Full remote path: The complete document root path to the content located on the ftp server. If you're unsure what the complete document root path is, then please contact your system administrator or submit a support ticket to calmdev.com. It will be something like this /var/www/mydomain.com/htdocs/content/
  • Full web path: The publicly web accessible path that corresponds to the full remote storage path. For example using the the path mentioned above: http://www.mydomain.com/content/
  • Passive: Turns passive mode on or off. In passive mode, data connections are initiated by the client, rather than by the server. It may be needed if the client is behind firewall.
  • Port: This parameter specifies an alternate port to connect to. If it is omitted or set to zero, then the default FTP port, 21, will be used.
  • Username: The username (USER).
  • Password: The password (PASS).

Once you have added an FTP server and have verified the connection as available, you may move on to the next tutorial demonstrating how to upload and schedule movies.

Video of the Day: Uploading and Scheduling Movies


This chapter covers how to upload and schedule movies on your website(s) using Video of the Day. In the previous chapter I covered post installation configuration tasks such as how to configure an FTP server to establish an available connection to the content server that you'd like to upload to. You're not restricted to using any single FTP server.

For example, let's say you store one niche of content on server A and another niche of content on server B. When it comes time to upload content to server B, simply select that server from the drop list as the target upload server. Video of the Day remembers what server your content has been uploaded to and provides access to all of the remotely stored content to be used for inclusion within any domain's web page running on your server.

Note: You can add the same FTP server multiple times - however, make sure you are using a unique storage directory for each instance. For example, '/var/www/calmdev.com/html/content/cooking/' could store my cooking content and '/var/www/calmdev.com/html/content/travels/' could store my family travel content. Both would use the same FTP Login information, however each niche of content would be stored in it's own unique directory.

Before proceeding with the uploading of your movie content, you'll need to add at least one website into the system. Generally, if you're promoting any type of web affiliate program, using video promotional content, this would be the place to enter the domain and linking code associated to one of the affiliate web program's websites. So if I planned on promoting 'Website A', I'd enter the website domain 'WebsiteA.com' and my linking code which may look something like 'http://www.WebsiteA.com?ref=4m34&tour=1&exits=no'. If you aren't promoting any type of program you may enter own domain and link to the home page. The websites you submit here are used during the movie upload process to associate the uploaded files with a website. The associated domain and linking code are then made available from within your templates as two of the seven special PHP variables that are available for use. You'll learn about the seven special PHP template variables in the next chapter.

Below is an explanation of each form field that can be found on the movies form:

  • Content Server: Target FTP server. The uploaded files will be transfered to the content server. Select a target server from the drop down box.
  • Associated Website: Website the content is associated with. Example, your website or a sponsors. Video of the Day associated each movie that is uploaded into the system with a website.
  • Movie Title: Provides a way for you to recognize the uploaded files within Video of the Day. It's alsol be used for the value of the alt and title attributes associated with your movie screen shot image tags.
  • Movie Title Suffix: Appends string to the end of file names. Some people like to add text strings to the end of file names to help users remember where they downloaded content from. Example, -MyWebsiteName could create: movie-title-MyWebsiteName.wmv
  • Go Live Date: Date the uploaded content should be displayed on your website. Input is month, day, year format.
  • ImageMagick Path: Path to ImageMagick's convert utility. If you're not sure login to `ssh` and type `whereis convert`. If ImageMagick is installed you should receive output similar to, "convert: /usr/bin/convert". Otherwise, you'll need to install ImageMagick or contact your system administrator.
  • Movie Clip: Motion picture file that you'd like to upload.
  • Screenshot 1: Still picture image file associated with movie clip.
  • Screenshot 2: See `Screenshot 1`.
  • Crop Size: Dimensions in pixels for image resizing. For example, entering 240x180 will create an image 240px wide by 180px high using imagemagick.

When editing movies, Video of the Day uses smart file management routines to allow for any desired rescheduling, renaming or re-uploading after the initial upload process. Your files are keeped well organized in separate folders named according to the scheduled go live date within content directories that you specify during each FTP server configuration.

For example, if you'd like to move content from one server to another Video of the Day will move the files from server A to the appropriate content directory on server B. If you edit a movies title - the associated file names are also updated on the remote content server, deleting movies from the system also deletes associated files from the remote server, changing the go live date moves remote content to the corresponding content folder, Re-uploading files will replace existing files with the new copy, deleting a website will delete all content assoicated with that website from each content server, etc.

Video of the Day: Creating and Integrating Templates


Creating and integrating templates into your website is fairly straight forward assuming you know HTML and have the basic 'Hello world' knowledge of PHP.

You can create an unlimited number of templates which my contain syntax from HTML, CSS, XHTML, PHP, Javascript, etc. There are seven special variables that can be used within your templates using a very simple print statement in PHP. The seven available variables are as followed:


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Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/var/www/calmdev.com/html//plugins/GeSHi-1.0.7.17/geshi/geshi.inc.php' (include_path='.:/usr/share/pear') in /var/www/calmdev.com/html/video-of-the-day/manual/index.php on line 142