Static copy of an s9y site on a CD-Rom

frstep · Post by **frstep** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:25 pm

I've been asked to advise a voluntary organisation on how to improve communication to their field operations. Since these are in developing countries, internet access to their existing support website is not always possible, so they burn cd-r's and mail them out once each month.

But their current static site is poor, and a cms would be a good move. A blog engine with s9y's functionality would probably meet 95% of their needs. Trouble is, the off-line version of the site is vital. Running a PHP server on local machines is not an option, unless it was very easy for the enduser to install. (Some people have suggested using PriadoBlender). Note the static site would be read-only. A bonus would be to have a client-side search function.

I'm not sure s9y will be any help on this matter, but I thought I would ask anyway - maybe someone here has come across the same needs and can advise on possible solutions?

Thanks,

F.

winkiller · Post by **winkiller** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:27 pm

I can only give a few hints on what might be possible

a) there are several "site-spiders" or offline-readers that just download every page of a website and save it after fixing the contained links - this often poses problem with dynamic content because of the urls.
But if you have mod_rewrite enabled and your s9y urls look like /archives/2006/2/1/12-foo.html than it should work just fine to just download the whole page

b) search for a simple webserver that can run from a cd, put s9y into a aqlite database and all is dine - perhaps you should try to find out if WAMP or xampp can be run from cd. (I discourage the use of mysql here because of bloat and perhaps licencing issues)

carl_galloway · Post by **carl_galloway** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 9:13 pm

I can confirm that xampp will work from cd-rom, however it requires a mini linux, see the following, they should work well in your scenario, and have the advantage of working on older computers. Downside is you may need to provide additional documentation on using linux - but this might not be a problem.

lamppix
slampplite

A google for 'xampp livecd' will also produce a few others, some that allow installing xampp, and other like the above that already ship with it.

You'll need to pay attention to the relevant docs on editing the iso to include your serendipity blog. Also make sure you visit the xampp forums

Cheers
Carl

judebert · Post by **judebert** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 11:36 pm

Which reminds me of the stuff I originally thought the "static pages" plugin would do. I wanted to generate a static site from my Serendipity content. I have pretty slow database access on my shared server, but this is another application of 'staticizing' a site.

Ahh, so much to do, so little time...

frstep · Post by **frstep** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 11:18 am

Thanks guys, some useful ideas. Unfortunately getting the field operations to reboot their laptops into Linux, no matter how straightforward, is a non started. The info on the site is the sort of thing you need to be able to quickly check in the middle of doing 10 million other things.

Making a static copy would appear to be the best path - the only thing that would complicate this is the need to provide a seaqrch function - but maybe this could be a stand-alone product that you open in another browser window.

Any further thoughts on this subject gratefully received!

F.

Yoggi · Post by **Yoggi** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 1:58 pm

Uniformserver - http://www.uniformserver.com can fit on a USB stick or flash drive.

To run it on a Windows OS, you just click a start file and the server is running. To run MySQL just click a link.
To stop the server just click a stop file and remove the USB / CD etc.
Work on the HD also.
You do not need to install or boot any Linux distro on your PC.

carl_galloway · Post by **carl_galloway** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 4:25 pm

Yoggi,

That is a very elegant solution, thanks for the tip.

Carl