iVend INSTALL

iVend version 1.2 of 5 January 2004
coding by Bill Welliver <hww3@riverweb.com>

For complete installation instructions, please see the file InstallationAdministration.* located in the docs/ directory of your iVend distribution.

What is iVend?
--------------

iVend is a module for the Caudium web server which allows electronic
commerce functions to be provided quickly and easily. iVend supports 
multiple stores from a single installation, and provides direct support 
for SQL databases to handle product and order tracking.

iVend is currently in the early stages of development, and as such 
there will be bugs and missing features. Hopefully with the support of 
alpha and beta testers iVend will grow up to be a mature, powerful and 
useful tool.

What do I need for iVend to work?
---------------------------------

* A system running Caudium 1.3 or higher **with Crypto
  enabled**. See the section "A Note About Compatibility" below.
  iVend will not run without Crypto (you shouldn't even think about doing
  electronic commerce without crypto anyhow.)
* A copy of Pike in your PATH for running the setup scripts.
* An SQL database server supported by Pike.
  (iVend was developed using mysql3.23, however other dbms systems should 
  work as well with minimal changes to the code.) 
* Admistrative rights to the database system, as well as Caudium.
* A working knowledge of HTML, SQL databases, and Unix.

To set up a store:

1. Copy either of the store templates from the examples directory to a 
location in your filesystem. This will be your Store Root.

2. Create a database and grant SELECT, CREATE, INSERT, UPDATE permission 
to a user. This will be the store's database.

3. Create the store database using schema.mysql, as located in your store 
root.

4. Add ivend's src/ directory to your Caudium's module search path.

5. Add obox, tablify, and 123sessions to your virtual server.

6. Add an administrative user to the admin_users table. The username is 
case sensitive, and the password should be crypt()ed. Set the security 
level to 9, for full access.

7. Add iVend to a virtual server. Set all of the paths.


8. Access the admin interface for the store at /mountpoint/admin/.

Report any problems or bugs to hww3@riverweb.com
