Quick Smarty Install

In Debian Etch:

apt-get install smarty
1. edit php.ini (mine's at /etc/php5/apache2 and set include_path to ".:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear:/usr/share/php/smarty/libs"
2. restart apache2 with /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now you have a Smarty install. To use it, you'll need PHP code to drive Smarty. I'll include a sample bit of PHP code that I was working on with Mike A:

<?php

require("Smarty.class.php");

$smarty = new Smarty();

$dir = '/var/www-sites.d/malborn.pachogrande.com';

$smarty->template_dir = $dir . '/smarty/templates';

$smarty->compile_dir = $dir . '/smarty/templates_c';

$smarty->cache_dir = $dir . '/smarty/cache';

$smarty->config_dir =$dir . '/smarty/configs';

$content = implode('', file($dir . "/index.txt"));

$head = implode('', file($dir . "/head.txt"));

$footer = implode('', file($dir . "/footer.txt"));

$navbar = implode('', file($dir . "/navbar.txt"));

if(preg_match('/<title>(.*?)<\/title>/is', $head, $m)) {

$title = $m[1];

} else {

$title = "Default Title";

}

$smarty->assign("title", $title);

$smarty->assign("head", $head);

$smarty->assign("footer", $footer);

$smarty->assign("content", $content);

$smarty->assign("navbar", $navbar);

$smarty->display("default.tpl");

Now, for Smarty to operate you need to supply some directories (i.e. template_dir, compile_dir, cache_dir, config_dir). compile_dir and cache_dir need to writeable by the web server user so in Debian something like:

#!/bin/bash

DIR=/var/www-sites.d/malborn.pachogrande.com

mkdir $DIR/smarty

mkdir $DIR/smarty/cache

mkdir $DIR/smarty/configs

mkdir $DIR/smarty/templates

mkdir $DIR/smarty/templates_c

sudo chown -r :www-data $DIR/smarty/cache

sudo chown -r :www-data $DIR/smarty/templates_c

Write default.tpl into $DIR/smarty/templates/default.tpl . For example,

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"

"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

<html>

<head>

{$head}

<title>{$title}</title>

</head>

<body>

<div class="title">{$title}</div>

<h1>Navigation</h1>

{$navbar}

</div>

{$content}

</div>

{$footer}

</div>

</body>

</html>

Now, moving from here would be something like:

1. Writing code to check for a navbar.txt in the current direction. If not found, stuff navbar Smarty tag with "Back up a level" that moves up one subdirectory (i.e. go to /directory/index.html if you were are /directory/author.html, and go to /index.html when you were are /directory/index.html, etc.)

2. Could proceed by designing a number of templates in Smarty for the same basic content - i.e. skin-bluesteel.tpl and then providing a user interface to switch templates.

3. Perhaps eliminate filesystem reliance and put URL's into a database. Map /directory to /directory/index.html, similar with /. If not in database, display a generic 404 error. You can develop this script by calling it like /database-script-were-writing.php/directory/index.html and then looking into PATH_INFO from the server which will contain /directory/index.html . Once you have this perfected, you set up apache with something like "Alias / /var/www-sites.d/malborn.pachogrande.com/database-script-were-writing.php" and everything should pretty much just work.