My DataBook Manual

  1. Introduction
  2. Requirements
  3. Installation
  4. Manual Installation
  5. Cron settings

 

1. Introduction
We'd first like to thank you for your interest in My DataBook and look forward to being able to assist you with managing your time. My DataBook will assist you with everyday time consuming appointments, tasks and scheduling. We hope you'll enjoy the feature rich application and help us improve on it's functionality and reliability by providing valuable feed back on it's performance and ease of use. Once You have the application installed you can access help for any assistance you might need by clicking on the "support/ help" link thats located at the top of the main login screen.

2. Requirements
Before we can start the installation of My DataBook you'll need to meet some minimum requirements. You must have PHP 4.3 or high istalled on your server. You must also have access to MySQL 4.0 or higher installed on your server or a server that you are able to connect with. MySQL is required due to the database holding all the information that you'll have in your DataBook. While PHP is required to bring all the data to you via the internet.

3. Installation
First thing you want to do is create a directory named "mdb" to install My DataBook into. If you need assistance with creating a directory please consult your hosting service for assistance. But you should be able to do this with any FTP program. After the creation of the directory ("mdb") you'll want to password it so that nobody will have access to your DataBook without the username and password. My DataBook doe's not have built in user authentication so it is important that you make your new directory password protected. For assistance on this you will again want to consult your hosting service. If you are familure with scripting and want to try and create your own .htaccess file you can find a tutorial on it here There are also a number of sites and tutorials to assist you with the creation of a .htaccess file. For more tutorials on this click here. After you have protected your "mdb" directory you'll need to create another directory inside the "mdb" directory called "images". It must be named exactly the same way or none of your images will appear in My DataBook.

Once you have the directory "mdb" created and protected you can start transfering the files that came in the zip file. You must upload all the files in the zip, leaving one out will result in failure when trying to run My DataBook. After unzipping the file you'll find 28 files and a images directory containing a number of images. Upload all the files to your "mdb" directory and all the images to the "images" directory.

Ok now before we can run the install script you'll need to set the permissions on the "mdb" directory to 666 in order for the install script to be able to create the needed files.

With all that completed all you have to do now is run the setup.php file and let My DataBook complete it's own installation. (e.g. http://www.yoursite_url.com/mdb/setup.php) The script will ask you some questions and all you have to do is answer the questions and you'll be up and running in now time.

After the setup is completed you'll want to delete the setup.php file.

4. Manual Installation
If for some reason the setup script did not work for you please let us know by clicking here so that we can make the needed changes in the next release. Your feed back is important the improvements of My DataBook.

In order to install My DataBook manually your going to follow the above instructions aside from running the setup.php file. Instead of running that your going to need to create the database tables manually by running the sql statements included in the tables.sql file. If you are running phpMyAdmin on your site then all you have to do is upload the file to phpMyAdmin and it will create all the needed tables for you. If you don't have phpMyAdmin then i would suggest getting it here.

Now with the tables created you'll have to create a file named "data.inc.php" and enter the following information into it,

$DB_host="localhost"; // this being the MySQL server location. Normally localhost works fine
$DB_name="Database Name"; // the name of the database that holds all your tables
$DB_pass="Password"; // the password to connect to the MySQL database
$DB_user="User Name"; // the user name that you would use to connect to the MySQL database

$YOU="Your Name"; // Yep Your name
$YOUR_EMAIL="Your@Email.You"; // Your email address

// These names should match the tables that where created in your MySQL database
// Change them if needed but they MUST MATCH incorrect names will result in failure
// when trying to run My DataBook
$Table_notes="MDB_notes";
$Table_contacts="MDB_contacts";
$Table_groups="MDB_groups";
$Table_reminders="MDB_reminders";
$Table_diary="MDB_diary";
$Table_tasks="MDB_tasks";
$Table_task_updates="MDB_tasks_update";
$Table_appointments="MDB_appointments";
$Table_scheduled_notes="MDB_scheduled_notes";

Assuming you followed all the above directions you should be able to run My DataBook without any problems. If you still experience problems let us know by clicking here and we will do everything we can to make sure it works.

5. Cron Settings
In order for the email reminders to work you must start a cron job and have it exicute the cronjob.php file every night at midnight (or whenever you want the emails to be sent to you). If you need assistance with creating a cronjob you can click here and locate a tutorial. For those who have access to the cron settings via control panel your want to run the following comand,

lynx -dump http://www.your.com/path/to/mdb/cronjob.php

Make the intervals every 24 hours at midnight and your done. If you don't have access to creating cronjobs then you'll have to consult your hosting company and have them set it up for you.

Again we would like to that you for your interest in My DataBook.
the Admin Shop