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Ushahidi Platform

The Ushahidi Platform is an open source web application for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. It allows people to collect and share their own stories using various mediums such as SMS, Web Forms, Email or Twitter. For more information about the platform and use cases (case studies) visit: http://www.ushahidi.com

System Requirements

To install the platform on your computer/server, the target system must meet the following requirements:

  • PHP version 5.2.3 or greater (5.3 or greater is recommended)
  • MySQL version 5.0 or greater
  • An HTTP Server. Kohana, which Ushahidi is built on, is known to work with the following web servers:
    • Apache 1.3+
    • Apache 2.0+
    • lighttpd
    • nginx
    • Microsoft Internet Information Server (MS IIS)
  • Unicode support in the operating system

Required Extensions

The following is a list of PHP extensions that must be installed on your server in order for Ushahidi to run properly:

NOTE: Need to figure out what extensions you already have installed on your server? Here are instructions to do just that: http://jontangerine.com/silo/php/phpinfo/

Optional Server Requirements

To use Ushahidi's "Clean URLS" feature on an Apache Web Server, you will need the mod_rewrite module and the ability to use local .htaccess files.

###Installing mod_rewrite

#####Debian/Ubuntu flavours of Linux

sudo a2enmod rewrite

#####CentOS, OS X and Windows

Make sure the following line is NOT commented in your httpd.conf

LoadModule rewrite_module

###Additional Configuration To check if local .htaccess files are allowed, verify that the "AllowOverride" directive in your Apache config (for the web server directory in which you have installed Ushahidi) has been set to "All" i.e.:

<Directory [your-document-root-directory]>
    ...
    AllowOverride All
    ...
</Directory>

NOTE:

  • Clean URLs means that the URLs of your deployment will not have the 'index.php' prefix
  • You MUST restart your Apache web server after making the changes outlined above

Installation

  • ####Download and extract Ushahidi You can obtain the official release of the software from the download site. Alternatively, you can find downloads for the current and previous releases on the Wiki

    To unzip/extract the archive on a typical Unix/Linux command line:

      tar -zxvf Ushahidi_Web-xxxx.tar.gz

    or in the case of a zip file:

      unzip Ushahidi_Web-xxxx.zip

    This will create a new directory Ushahidi_Web-xxxx containing all the Ushahidi platform files and directories - Move the contents of this directory into a directory within your webserver's document root or your public HTML directory.

    #####Getting the latest develop code (CAUTION: only do this if you know what you're doing)

    clone the latest code from github

      git clone --recursive git://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Web.git

    We add the recursive flag so that git will clone the submodules too

  • ####Ensure the following directories are writable (i.e. have their permission values set to 777)

    • application/config
    • application/cache
    • application/logs
    • media/uploads
    • .htaccess

    On Unix/Linux, you can change the permissions as follows:

      cd path-to-webserver-document-root-directory
  chmod -R 777 application/config
  chmod -R 777 application/cache
  chmod -R 777 application/logs
  chmod -R 777 media/uploads
  chmod 777 .htaccess

    NOTE: The process of configuring file permissions is different for various operating systems. Here are some helpful links about permissions for the Windows (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308419) and Unix (http://www.washington.edu/computing/unix/permissions.html) operating systems.

  • ####Create the Ushahidi database Ushahidi stores all its information in a database. You must therefore create this database in order to install Ushahidi. This is done as follows:

      mysqladmin -u 'username' -p create 'databasename'

    MySQL will prompt for the password for the database password and then create the initial database files. Next, you must log in and set the database access rights:

      mysql -u 'username' -p

    Again, you will be prompted for the 'username' database password. At the MySQL prompt, enter the following command:

      GRANT SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, CREATE, DROP, ALTER, INDEX, LOCK TABLES on database.* 
  TO 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

    Where:

    • 'databasename' is the name of your database
    • 'username@localhost' is the name of your MySQL account
    • 'password' is the password required for that username

    NOTE: Your account must have all the privileges listed above in order to run Ushahidi on your webserver.

  • ####Ensure PHP error_reporting level is compatable As of PHP-5.4 Ushahidi doesn't work with the error_reporting level E_STRICT. Ensure this level is excluded from the error_reporting configuration.

  • ####Run the install script To run the install script, point your browser to the base url of your website: (e.g. http://www.example.com).

    You will be guided through a series of screens to set up the database and site settings depending on the installation method you choose (Basic or Advanced)

  • ####Clean up

    Delete the installer

    Leaving the installer files in your installation is a security risk. Now you've installed successfully, Delete the entire installer directory

    Remove write permissions from config files
      cd path-to-webserver-document-root-directory
  chmod -R 755 application/config
  chmod 644 application/config/*
  chmod 644 .htaccess

Additional Information

For further references and documentation, head over to our wiki (http://wiki.ushahidi.com). Also, we encourage you to drop by our forums (https://wiki.ushahidi.com/display/forums/Ushahidi+Forums) if you have any additional questions or concerns.