Serendipity Forums

Posted: **Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:36 am**

Dear s9y folks,

First of all, I'm twice impressed with serendipity. For one, it was the only framework that I managed to install under all constraints that my university imposes on our websites. For another, I'm thrilled by how helpful this forum is and how attentive is the developer. (Not to mention the great quality of the software)

I didn't want exactly a blog, but a general CMS. Serendipity is very flexible, though, and I got everything I wanted after little tweaking. The only thing I'd like to have is an initial (welcome) page. Is that hard to get? Where should I look? It could be something like a permanent single entry.

Thanks,
incubus

EDIT: I feel I posted in the wrong section. Please feel free to move my post to wherever it should belong.

Posted: **Fri Jun 09, 2006 7:28 am**

incubus, welcome to the world of Serendipity. It is possible to do what you wish, and I can think of three possible methods.

1. install the extended properties plugin and set one of your posts as sticky, this means it will always be at the top of your other entries
2. install the static pages plugin and set one of the static pages as your frontpage
3. customise your chosen template and add some smarty code to your index.tpl just below the <body> tag;

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{if $startpage}welcome page{else}back to normal blog overview{/if}

I think method 2 is probably what you are after, and method 3 the least likely, with method one possibly being the quickest and easiest but not necessarilty what you want.

Carl

Posted: **Fri Jun 09, 2006 9:25 pm**

Carl,

Thank you so much for the reply. Looks like #2 is what I'm looking for indeed. But to take that path, I have to solve the only problem that I had in my installation: I cannot add new event plugins through the Administrator page.

I get this error:

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Fatal error: Cannot redeclare _pear_call_destructors() (previously declared in ./bundled-libs/HTTP/../PEAR.php:744) in ./bundled-libs/HTTP/../Net/../PEAR.php on line 775

Is there a way of installing StaticPage by editing some configuration? Or this would be a bad idea?

Thanks again,
incubus

Posted: **Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:19 pm**

Hi!

Hm, that error indicates that some PEAR problems exist on your server, or your server is not properly evaluating "include_once" PHP code calls. Could it be that you are not using a recentPHP version on your server?

You might be able to solve it by editing your serendipity_config.inc.php file and set the $serendipity['use_PEAR'] variable to true. Then you also need to install any of the bundled PEAR modules that s9y usually requires (like NET_URL and HTTP_Request)...

Bestregards,
Garvin

Posted: **Sat Jun 10, 2006 12:47 am**

Ah, yes, I wish I could tell the admins to upgrade things here. Plus, there are all sorts of annoying safe mode measures in place. It's a miracle that I managed to install serendipity.

Reading your previous posts (garvin's), I already included that "use pear" flag, but had no success. But why do it the "hard" way? I opened the sqlite file, found the table for plugins, and manually created an entry for "staticpage".

Voila. It's working wonderfully. Serendipity wins again, with its simplicity. I got everything working just by using "grep" and reading this forum.

Thanks, everybody.
incubus

Posted: **Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:46 pm**

Hey, Garvin! I think "Serendipity wins again, with its simplicity." needs to be a quote on our front page.

Posted: **Sun Jun 11, 2006 5:06 pm**

Definitely. Great quote. Thanks for that. *gg*

Best regards,
Garvin

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