REQUIREMENTS

  - RAILS VERSION 2.1
  - The engines plugin for Rails 2.1: http://railsengines.org/news/2008/06/01/engines-2-1-0-release/
  - ImageMagick: http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php
  - Several gems:
      rmagick
      hpricot
      htmlentities
      RedCloth
      rake 0.8.1
      haml

GETTING COMMUNITY ENGINE RUNNING

1. From the command line:
    $ rails site_name (create a rails app if you don't have one already)
2. Install the engines plugin:
    $ script/plugin install git://github.com/lazyatom/engines.git
3. Put community engine plugin into plugins directory (use one of the following methods):

    # If you're not using git, and just want to add the source files:
    # Download a tarball from https://github.com/bborn/communityengine/tarball/master 
    # and unpack it into /vendor/plugins/community_engine

    # Using git, make a shallow clone of the community_engine repository:
  $ git clone --depth 1 git://github.com/bborn/communityengine.git vendor/plugins/community_engine

    # If you want to keep your community_engine plugin up to date using git, you'll have to add it as a submodule: 
    # http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html#submodules

4. Create your database and modify your config/database.yml appropriately.
5. Delete public/index.html (if you haven't already)
6. Modify your environment.rb as indicated below:

      ## environment.rb should look something like this:
      ===============================================================
      RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '2.1' unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION
   require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), 'boot')
   require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '../vendor/plugins/engines/boot')

   Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
     #resource_hacks required here to ensure routes like /:login_slug work
     config.plugins = [:engines, :community_engine, :white_list, :all]
     config.plugin_paths += ["#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/plugins/community_engine/engine_plugins"]
  
         ... Your stuff here ...
   end
   # Include your application configuration below
   require "#{RAILS_ROOT}/vendor/plugins/community_engine/engine_config/boot.rb"

7. Modify each environment file (development.rb, test.rb, and production.rb) as indicated below:

      # development.rb, production.rb, and test.rb should include something like:
      ===============================================================
      APP_URL = "http://localhost:3000" (or whatever your URL will be for that particular environment)

8. Modify your routes.rb as indicated below:

      # Add this after any of your own existing routes, but before the default rails routes: 
      ===============================================================
   map.from_plugin :community_engine
   # Install the default routes as the lowest priority.
   map.connect ':controller/:action/:id'
   map.connect ':controller/:action/:id.:format'
      

9. Generate the community engine migrations: 
    $ script/generate plugin_migration
    
10. From the command line:
    $ rake db:migrate

11. You may need to change these lines in application.rb (if you're not using cookie sessions):
   # See ActionController::RequestForgeryProtection for details
   # Uncomment the :secret if you're not using the cookie session store
   protect_from_forgery # :secret => 'your_secret_string'
    
12. Run tests (remember, you must run "rake test" before you can run the community_engine tests): 
   $ rake test
   $ rake community_engine:test
13. Start your server and check out your site! 
   $ mongrel_rails start
   or
   $ ./script/server

OPTIONAL CONFIGURATION

Application.yml

To override system variables in the default configuration, create a file called application.yml in RAILS_ROOT/config.

• The application configuration defined in this file overrides the one defined in /community_engine/engine_config/application.yml
• This is where you can change commonly used configuration variables, like AppConfig.community_name, etc.
• This YAML file will get converted into an OpenStruct, giving you access to system variables through the AppConfig object (i.e. AppConfig.community_name, AppConfig.support_email)

Photo Uploading Settings

By default CommunityEngine uses the file system to store photos.
To use Amazon S3 as the storage method for your file uploads:

1. You'll need the aws-s3 gem installed
2. You'll need to add a file called amazon_s3.yml to the application's root config directory (examples are in /community_engine/sample_files).
3. You'll need to change your configuration in your application.yml to tell CommunityEngine to use s3 as the photo backend.
4. Finally, you'll need an S3 account for S3 photo uploading.
   

Using S3 for backups

CommunityEngine includes the s3.rake tasks for backing up your site to S3. If you plan on using these, you'll need to add a file in RAILS_ROOT/config/s3.yml. (Sample in sample_files/s3.yml)

Roles

CommunityEngine Users have a Role (by default, it's admin, moderator, or member).
To set a user as an admin, you must manually change his role_id through the database.
Once logged in as an admin, you'll be able to toggle other users between moderator and member (just go to their profile page and look on the sidebar.)
Admins and moderators can edit and delete other users posts.

Themes

CommunityEngine supports themes (packages of haml templates, images and CSS that change the way the application looks). Learn more about using themes.

Other Stuff

Any views you create in your app directory will override those in community_engine/app/views. 
For example, you could create RAILS_ROOT/app/views/layouts/application.html.haml and have that include your own stylesheets, etc.

You can also override CommunityEngine's controllers by creating identically-named controllers in your applications app/controllers directory.