• Introduction
• What is Newscoop?
• Feature list
• Publishing with Newscoop
• Getting started
• The dashboard
• How permissions change the interface
• Main menu
• Creating a publication
• Choosing a theme
• Creating an issue
• Creating a section
• Creating an article
• Editing an article
• Using the TinyMCE editor
• The sidebar
• Using plugins
• Translating an article
• Managing content
• Import XML
• Publishing articles
• Publishing an issue
• Article comments
• Moderating comments
• Newscoop administration
• System preferences
• Themes
• Article Types
• Topics
• Languages
• Countries
• Localizer
• Logs
• Support
• Image rendering
• User management
• Managing authors
• Installing plugins
• Newscoop installation
• System requirements
• Backup and upgrade
• MySQL installation
• Installation on Debian/Ubuntu
• Installation on Red Hat Enterprise
• Manual installation
• Installation steps
• Log file maintenance
• Help
• Where to go for support
• Appendix
• Expert install
• About this manual

Installation on Debian/Ubuntu

Ready made packages of Newscoop are available for Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux via secure apt. This is the recommended installation method for Newscoop, because it offers automatic updates and resolution of package dependencies. This guide assumes that you have sudo or root powers on the target server - if not, you need to ask your system administrator to install Newscoop for you.

Setting up the secure apt repository

To add the repository that contains the Newscoop software, open the sources.list file in the nano editor with:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Type your password, and the sources.list file will open. For Ubuntu Precise LTS, scroll to the end of this document and add the following line:

deb http://apt.sourcefabric.org/ precise main

For Ubuntu Saucy, substitute saucy in place of precise. For Debian wheezy, substitute wheezy in place of precise.

Press Ctrl+O to write out the sources.list file, and Ctrl-X to quit the nano editor.

You now need to update your sources. Type:

sudo apt-get update

You will probably see an error message about a missing public key. To fix this, you need to install the sourcefabric-keyring package, which contains the package signing key:

sudo apt-get install sourcefabric-keyring

Update your sources again, to confirm that you are now using a trusted software repository:

sudo apt-get update

You should no longer see the error message about the public key.

Installing the Newscoop packages

After confirming that the secure apt repository is set up, you can install the Newscoop packages. The geonames-city-data package is only required for searching for cities by name in Newscoop's map editing feature. You can install this package with the command:

sudo apt-get install geonames-city-data

Optionally, you may wish to install sample data for demo sites, with the command:

sudo apt-get install newscoop-sample-data

You can also install a PHP cache for optimum Newscoop performance, if you wish:

sudo apt-get install php-apc

See the chapter Manual installation for details of APC administration and authentication.

After the above packages have been installed, you can install the main Newscoop package with the command:

sudo apt-get install newscoop

This command will install all of the Newscoop components, plus any other packages that Newscoop requires in order to run. It will also upgrade a previous apt or .deb package Newscoop installation.

The Newscoop package installer will ask you a few questions about the kind of server you want to set up, such as the Apache configuration that you require.

Finally, check that Newscoop is running. Open a web browser with the URL of the web server that you have installed, such as http://www.example.com. For a test installation accessed from the same machine, this URL might be:

http://localhost/

If you see the Newscoop installer page, you can now skip the chapter Manual installation and proceed to the chapter Installation steps.

Troubleshooting

Default site still enabled

If you see a page which says "It works! This is the default web page for this server. The web server software is running but no content has been added, yet" then you need to disable Apache's default site and reload the configuration, with the commands:

sudo a2dissite default
sudo invoke-rc.d apache2 reload

Then refresh your browser.

No fully qualified domain name 

If Apache complains about the domain name of the server, like this:

apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified
domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName

it probably means that you have no domain name configured for the server. For a test server on a local network, you may need to add an entry to the /etc/hosts file of the server, like this:

127.0.1.1    www.example.com

and a corresponding entry into the /etc/hosts file of your desktop machine on the network, like this:

192.168.1.2   www.example.com

where 192.168.1.2 is the IP address of your Newscoop server, and www.example.com is the name of your publication's website. For a server on a larger network or the public Internet, ask your network administrator for the correct domain names and IP addresses to use.

Administration interface not found

If you chose the 'System-wide (all vhosts)' option when installing Newscoop, and installation completed, but attempting to access the administration interface results in the error:

Not Found

The requested URL /var/lib/newscoop/admin.php was not found on this server.

this means that you need to edit the file /var/lib/newscoop/.htaccess like so:

sudo nano /var/lib/newscoop/.htaccess

Add the line RewriteBase /newscoop under the line RewriteEngine On like this:

 <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /newscoop

Then save the file Ctrl+O, close nano with Ctrl+X, reload the Apache configuration:

sudo invoke-rc.d apache2 reload

and refresh your web browser.