Requirements
The following are required for Fusion News to function:
- PHP 4.3.0 or better
The following are optional, but add extra functionality to Fusion News, each of which are explained.
- GD Library 2.0 or better
To generate visual confirmation for comments to prevent web bots from posting spam. - File uploads enabled
Allows images to be uploaded when adding a new post, so they can be shown in the post.
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New Installation
You should upload all of the files located in the 'upload' directory to a directory on your website. If you are using a FTP client, all *.html, *.php, *.css , and *.js files should be uploaded in ASCII mode, and the remaining files in Binary mode. Most FTP clients available will do this automatically, but make sure that it is uploading the files correctly.
The installation script has been made to make it as easy to use as possible, and with the least amount of user input necessary. To begin the installation process, go to the install.php file through your web browser. If your domain name is http://www.mydomain.com, and you uploaded Fusion News to a directory called 'news', you would type in the address http://www.mydomain.com/news/install.php.
From there, you can follow the instructions. Once you have installed Fusion News, please make sure you delete the install.php file to prevent any one from attempting to reinstall Fusion News.
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Upgrading
From 3.8.x or below
To upgrade, you should upload only the /upgrade directory to begin with, which is located in the 'upload' directory. Then run the /upgrade/index.php file from your browser and follow the on-screen instructions. Once the upgrade process has finished, upload the files stated in the list given.
After finishing upgrading, make sure you delete the /upgrade directory.
Important Changes
There are some important changes to the functionality of Fusion News from 3.8.x or below, which you should know about:
- static_news.html has been removed, and replaced with news.php. See below for how you should display your news.
From 3.9.x
Create backups of the following files:
- archive.php
- comments.php
- common.php
- fullnews.php
- functions.php
- headlines.php
- index.php
- language.db.php
- news.php
- rss.php
- search.php
- send.php
- upload.php
- skins/fusion/index.html
- skins/fusion/stylesheet.css
- skins/simplicity/stylesheet.css
Overwrite these old files, with the new versions provided in the ZIP file.
If upgrading from a version before 3.9.3, continue with the following steps:
- Back up smillies.php.
- Open smillies.php.
- Add |<| to the end of each line.
- At the beginning of the file, create a new line with this text:
<?php die ('You may not access this file.'); ?>
- If no blank line exists at the end of the file, create one.
- Save, close and re-upload smillies.php.
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Reporting Problems
Please report any problems you find to the Fusion News forum of the FusionNews.net Support Forum.
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Showing News
On Your Website
To make the news appear on your website, you will need to first make sure that the page you want it to show on is a PHP page (i.e. a *.php file). If not, you will need to rename the file.
Where you want to display the news, you should put this in the page's source code:
<?php
include 'news/news.php';
?>
The path must be relative from the page you are placing this code. For example, if your website file is two directories down from the Fusion News files, it would be something like this:
<?php
include 'directory1/news/news.php';
?>
To show news from a single category, the variable $fn_category
should be specified before including the news. For example:
<?php
$fn_category = 1;
include 'news/news.php';
?>
This would display all the news from category ID 1. The category IDs can be found in the Manage Categories page of the admin panel.
Headlines
Headlines can be displayed in a similar way to the news:
<?php
$fn_news_url = './index.php?view=news';
include 'news/headlines.php';
?>
Or to display a single category:
<?php
$fn_category = 1;
include 'news/headlines.php';
?>
RSS Feeds
To begin with, ensure that RSS feeds have been enabled. To do this, click the Addon Options link on the Admin page. The checkbox under the RSS Feed section, labelled 'Enable RSS Feed' should be checked.
Below that, the RSS feed name, description and encoding can be changed, and changes will come into affect once the settings have been saved.
Every time a new post is made, or a post is changed the RSS feed file will be updated accordingly. The RSS feed file is called rss.php. To receive feeds of a particular category, ?fn_category=category_id
should be used, where category_id is the ID of the desired category.
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