Last Updated Wednesday September 6th, 2006
- What is the Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT)? How much does it cost?
- What is required to run SPT?
- I only have FTP access to my web server. Can I run SPT?
- How much disk space is required for SPT?
- Can I run SPT on Windows 98/NT/ME/XP/2000?
- How well does SPT scale?
- What documentation is available for SPT?
- What technical support is available for SPT?
- How do I customize the SPT user interface?
- Will I lose my html customizations when I upgrade to a newer version of SPT?
- Can I change the metadata fields or add my own fields for SPT?
- Can records be added or revised at the same time that users are doing searches?
- What types of image files does SPT support (GIF, JPEG, etc)?
- Is SPT available in other (non-English) languages?
- Do I need root ("super user") access on the web server to install SPT?
- What's the difference between SPT and CWIS?
- Why do I get a blank page when I try to do something?
- 1. What is the Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT)? How much does it cost?
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The Scout Portal Toolkit (SPT) is a turnkey web-based software package designed to allow groups with collections of information and very limited technical resources to share that information with others via the World Wide Web.
There is no charge for the Scout Portal Toolkit. SPT is open source software that is licensed under the GPL (GNU General Public License). SPT was developed by the Internet Scout Project under a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
It is worth mentioning that, as currently licensed under the GPL, SPT cannot be packaged or used as part of a commercial product. If you are interested in incorporating SPT or making use of SPT code as part of a commercial product, please contact the Internet Scout Project about possible licensing arrangements.
- 2. What is required to run SPT?
To install and run SPT you will need command-line (telnet or ssh) access to a Linux web server supporting (at minimum) PHP 4.0.6 and MySQL 3.23.29. SPT has also been installed and is running successfully on Solaris and OS X servers. Red Hat Linux 7.3 (full installation) or later is the recommended environment for running SPT.
- 3. I only have FTP access to my web server. Can I run SPT?
At this time, command-line (telnet, ssh, or console) access is required to install SPT. The command-line portion of the installation is very brief and self-explanatory, so you may be able to upload the package to your web server and ask the site administrator to run the command line portion for you.
- 4. How much disk space is required for SPT?
The SPT software itself requires less than 5 MB. Database storage requirements will, of course, vary with the number of resource records stored, but the disk usage is very modest by today's standards, since SPT is primarily storing text-based metadata.
- 5. Can I run SPT on Windows 98/NT/ME/XP/2000?
SPT is designed to run in a Linux/Unix environment, and the SPT install script will only run in that environment. However, some technically-adept users have managed, with significant effort, to get SPT running under Windows. Scout does not support or recommend using Windows to run SPT, and cannot provide assistance or information on doing so.
If you're still interested in trying to run SPT under Windows despite all of that, your best bet is to join the SPT-CWIS-Users mailing list and post a query there, asking for info or recommendations from anyone that may have tried running SPT under Windows.
- 6. How well does SPT scale?
One of the SPT development installations at Scout is normally loaded with 15,000 records and runs on a 500 MHz Celeron system (circa 1999), with no noticeable degradation in performance. The two CPU-intensive operations in SPT are updating the search database and updating the recommender system (both of which are done when adding or editing records), and faster hardware may be desirable to ensure that those operations happen in a timely manner.
- 7. What documentation is available for SPT? Is there an SPT manual?
Documentation to support the management, customization, cataloging, and setup is incorporated into the Help pages within SPT.
An overview of and some detail on SPT features and functionality can also be found in an article published in the November 2002 issue of D-LIB Magazine The article may be found at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november02/almasy/11almasy.html
- 8. What technical support is available for SPT?
The Internet Scout Project is a non-profit university research center, and as such we do not have the resources to provide corporate-level technical support, however we do try to track suggestions, bug reports, and other feedback, and generally support the user community. Comments and bug reports can be sent to the SPT development team at sptsupport@scout.wisc.edu. Scout cannot offer ongoing technical support, answer in-depth customization questions, or assist in the resolution of server-related problems.
A mailing list is also available for discussion between SPT users, and may be a good venue to post any questions you may have. You can subscribe to the SPT-CWIS-Users mailing list at http://scout.wisc.edu/mailman/listinfo/spt-cwis-users.
- 9. How do I customize the SPT user interface?
There are two ways of customizing the look and feel of an SPT installation: through the "Customize System Appearance" option on the Administration menu, and by adding your own custom HTML code.
The Customize System Appearance option allows you to change the colors used in the default "SPT Blue" interface, either by selecting new colors from the large palette displayed on that page, or by entering hexadecimal triplets (like "#CC99CC") if you want to use a color not in the palette. The Customize option also allows you to upload a new logo to replace the default "Scout Portal Toolkit" logo that appears in the upper right corner of the screen. (This logo must be in JPG or GIF format, depending on what is supported by your web server environment .)
To make more extensive changes to the SPT interface you can add your own custom HTML code. (A guide to adding custom HTML in SPT is forthcoming.)
- 10. Will I lose my HTML customizations when I upgrade to a newer version of SPT?
SPT is designed to preserve any customized HTML during upgrades, and will do so whenever possible. (For more information on how to insure that your HTML changes will be preserved, see the (forthcoming) customization guide.)
- 11. Can I change the metadata fields or add my own fields to SPT?
Yes, the metadata field set in SPT is easily modifiable and expandable by the portal administrator. Although SPT is distributed with a metadata field set based on Dublin Core, implementers are fully expected to tweak and modify the schema to meet their needs.
- 12. Can records be added or revised at the same time that users are doing searches?
Yes, records can be added, modified, and deleted without interrupting use of the portal. You can even rebuild the entire search database without affecting users who may be running searches or asking for recommendations.
- 13. What types of image files does SPT support (GIF, JPEG, etc)?
For image metadata fields (and the custom logo upload) the types of image files that SPT supports is dependent on your web server environment. If you are running on a Linux server and do not have the PHP "safe_mode" option turned on, then SPT should support GIF, JPEG, and PNG files. If you are running on a non-Linux server or a server with PHP safe_mode turned on, then which image types are supported will depend on what version of PHP you have. For versions of PHP that include release 1.6 or earlier of the GD library, GIF is supported but not PNG. For most newer versions, PNG is supported but not GIF. (GIF support has been dropped in newer versions because of patent issues.)
- 14. Is SPT available in other (non-English) languages?
As of this writing, several groups have expressed interest or indicated that they are undertaking to translate one or more of the SPT interfaces into another language. For more information your best bet is to join the SPT-CWIS-Users mailing list and post a message there, inquiring about translation efforts.
- 15. Do I need root ("super user") access on the web server to install SPT?
You do not need root access on your web server to install SPT. SPT can be installed using a regular user account, provided that you also have a MySQL database account to give SPT to allow it to set up the SPT database. (MySQL maintains its own login names and passwords, separate from those used to login to the Linux system.)
- 16. What's the difference between SPT and CWIS (the Collection Workflow Integration System)?
SPT and CWIS are both designed to help put collections of information on the web, but CWIS is being developed specifically for use by collections developers who want to integrate their work into NSDL (the National Science Digital Library). Specifically, CWIS comes pre-packaged with the nsdl_dc schema and GEM subject taxonomy, includes reference links to various NSDL-related resources, and includes a set of user interface themes specifically intended for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) sites.
That said, there is no requirement that you take part in NSDL to use CWIS, but if you're developing any sort of STEM-related collection, it is strongly encouraged. Taking part in NSDL will bring wider exposure to your work and help encourage continued development of CWIS and other useful software.
- 17. Why do I get a blank page when I try to do something?
To aid in troubleshooting, you should make sure that PHP is setup to display errors. By default on some PHP installations setup for production use, error outputting is disabled. Turning on error outputting or making sure that it is turned on is the first step in figuring out what is setup wrong. To do this, you need to check with your site administrator to ensure that the "display_errors" variable in the php.ini configuration file is set to "On". This would also be a good time to check the "error_reporting" variable to make sure that no error messages are omitted out.
Typical problems that we've seen regarding blanks pages:
- PHP runs out of memory on big records and/or collections. To fix this, have your site administrator increase the "memory_limit" variable in the php.ini configuration file.
- OS X and PHP have a bug when resolving relative and symlinked paths. As a result, some files are called multiple times with functions such as require_once() which causes PHP to stop executing. The only current workaround is to make sure that all higher level directories in which your site is located have read and execute permissions. This seems like a bug, but it exists in both PHP4 and PHP5 installations on Mac OS X.
