1Fantastic News Documentation



Section 1: Introduction

Section 2: Installation
    2.1 Compatible MySQL Versions
    2.2 Compatible PHP Versions

Section 3: Upgrade
    3.1 Upgrading from 1.1.6
    3.2 Upgrading any 2.x versions

Section 4: Using Includes
    4.1 Including news.php On a page
    4.2 Including Headlines on a page

Section 5: Copyright and Disclaimer

Section 6: Credits
   


Section 1: Introduction
Welcome to Fantastic News 2.0 Documentation.  This documentation is a work in progress and may not contain all the answers to every single option in Fantastic News.  It will however provide installation and upgrade instructions as well as documentation to common options used in Fantastic News.

Section 2: Installation
Fantastic News 2.0 contains a simple installation script located to the install directory it is very straight forward and simple to install.  Some requirements that must be met are that the script has access to read and write config.php other requirements are stated below

Section 2.1: Compatible MySQL Versions
Fantastic News 2.0 will run on MySQL versions 3.x and MySQL 4.x and has been tested and will run on those versions without problems.  It may run on higher or lower versions but at this time it is not a concern and using Fantastic News on those versions will be at your own risk.
 

Section 2.2: Compatible MySQL Versions
Fantastic News can run on PHP 4.3.0 or higher on the PHP 4 releases and can also run on PHP 5 both have been tested and should run without any problems.
 

Section 3: Upgrading
Fantastic News 2.0 contains many ways of upgrading to the latest versions.  The sub sections below explain in short how to do each type of upgrade

Section 3.1: Upgrading from 1.1.6
To upgrade to 2.0.1 you'll need to go to the update directory and it will guide you through upgrading your installation.  Upgrading to 2.0.0 removes a lot of un needed data and removes all the old comments so be aware of that. Make sure you backup your database before running the upgrade incase there is a problem while upgrading.
 

Section 3.2: Upgrading from 2.x.x
To upgrade to 2.1.5 from 2.0 just open upgrade200to201.php in your browser to do the slight modification and upload all the php files except config.php and the attachments.tpl located in the templates directory
To upgrade from 2.0.1 or above simply upload all the PHP files except config.php

Section 4: Using Includes
The using includes section will explain how to include files from the script on your page without breaking anything

Section 4.1: Including news.php
If you plan on including news.php on a page rather than calling it directly you can use the include("news.php"); if you're page is php or if its just straight html use the ssi equivalent.  You'll also need to put the config.php file in the location where you do the include so that the script can read the config.php file If you are including it make sure to set that in your settings so that the script knows not to include the header and footer templates on your news.php file. You'll also need to include a script path so that the script can find the location of your templates and internal functions that the script uses. This feature is not recommended however doing this can make it possible but please note you'll need to move your config.php file over everytime you change settings also since this won't be the config.php file it usually uses
 

Section 4.2: including headlines.php
To include headlines on your page simply use the php function include("headlines.php"); if your page is PHP or if it's html use the ssi equivalent.  There are no options you need to change but it is suggested that you modify headlines.tpl to reflect how you want your headlines to look and to modify how many headlines you want displayed by going into your settings

Section 5: Copyright and Disclaimer
Fantastic News is an open source piece of software created by Fantastic Scripts it may be modified freely as long as the source file headers are no modified and the copyright is kept intact.

Section 6: Credits
Fantastic News was created By Tony Baird of Fantastic Scripts