OpenBook beta 1.2.2

OpenBook is a simple PHP/MySQL guestbook application which is fast and lightweight.

This guestbook has been developed and tested under Windows running Apache using MySQL 3.23 and 4.1.0. The latest version can be obtained from the download page and a working demo is available at http://openbook.sourceforge.net

Note: all files are best viewed with a tab size of 2.

Note: it is recommended that you set "magic_quotes_gpc" to "off" in your php.ini file or an .htaccess file.

1. Unarchive package (.zip, .tar.gz) using a suitable archiving application, eg. Winzip, Powerarchiver,WinRAR, etc. You'll have a directory named openbook-version containing all the required files.
2. Open common.php in your favorite text editor and look for the following lines:
   $dbhost="localhost";  // database host address
   $dbuser="root";     // database user name
   $dbpassword="";   // database password
   $default_db="openbook";  // name of database
   You may also want to change the other settings in common.php to suit your preferences.
3. Change these values to suit your database configuration and save the file.
4. Upload all the files to your host using a FTP program like CuteFTP, WS_FTP, or LeechFTP.
5. Run the install script install.php. For example, if you uploaded the file to http://www.yourdomain.com/openbook/install.php, you'd point your web browser there and that'd run the install script.
6. Once installation is completed should go to the admin panel (User ID: admin, Password: 12345) to change your password.

Note: no upgrade script is available so if you've made modifications to the script, you'll lose those changes!

1. Edit the settings in common.php (installation step 2).
2. Upload and overwrite your old files with the new ones (ATTENTION! You'll lose any modifications you've made to your previous installation).
3. Run the upgrade script upgrade_1.2.2.php.

Note: no upgrade script is available so if you've made modifications to the script, you'll lose those changes!

1. Edit the settings in common.php (installation step 2).
2. Upload and overwrite your old files with the new ones (ATTENTION! You'll lose any modifications you've made to your previous installation).
3. Run the upgrade script upgrade_direct_1.2.2.php.

Version 1.2.2

• added administrator reply feature for administrators to reply to entries
• added "Forgot your password?" feature
• creation of admin accounts with the same User ID is no longer allowed
• page-spanning now shows only links to pages near the current page instead of all available pages
• admin is redirected back to page he/she was at after editing/deleting

Version 1.2.1

• fixed bug which failed to strip preceding "http://" in homepage URL
• allowed administrator to edit homepage field
• cleaned up scripts which contained mixture a tabs and spaces

Version 1.2.0

• changes made to database schema to include user homepage field
• added notification of guestbook entry via email
• added ability to Preview entry
• added ability to create other admin accounts (no deleting of accounts yet! -- will be in next release)
• added "conventional" format for display of entries
• allow entry of uppercase letters, underscores and periods in email address field
• fixed guestbook to display 1st page when an invalid page is attempted to be viewed
• fixed appearance of undefined variable warnings in cases where error_reporting is set to E_ALL by using isset()
• made several changes to stylesheet

Version 1.1.1

• fixed a bug where administrator editing an entry containing html entities caused these entities not to be displayed properly
• partially fixed (won't appear in most cases) a bug caused by long unbroken strings of user input which resulted in stretched tables
• removed extra horizontal line coming after last entry on the page
• added benchmarking code

Version 1.1.0

• added page spanning.
  The number of entries to display per page is set to 5. Currently, the only way to change this would be to edit the line $OB_entries_per_page="5" in common.php.
  There are 2 formats available: 1) page-numbered and 2) next/prev, the default being page-numbered. To change the format simply uncomment the relevant code segment in index.php (well-commented) and comment out the original one.
• displays total number of entries in guestbook
• made minor cosmetic changes

Version 1.0.12

• in view of PHP 4.1.0's recommendation that register_globals be set to "Off", variables were renamed to the appropriate $HTTP_*_VARS["variable_name"]
• fixed a bug which allowed users to enter an empty field for the name and/or message fields simply by entering an html tag like . This was because strip_tags() was used to completely remove tags. This has been replaced with htmlentities().
• fixed several minor bugs
• made minor cosmetic changes

Version 1.0.10

• 1st release version, previously existing as a school project

To Do list

1. visitor can give a rating for the website
2. easy theme-based altering of appearance of guestbook for administrator
3. smilies
4. allow BBcode-like input for users
5. avoid resubmits by caused by pressing "Back" or by double-clicking
6. notification of new guestbook entry to administrator via email
7. "Preview Post" option
8. page-spanning
9. ability for admin to add comments

Support

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