Installation Note

On most linux servers robopages will just run. Unzip it in the document root and then take a look at it. Copy and image into the fragments area. Edit a test.htm (HTML fragment) file. They should just appear, navigation and all. Navigation ordering is a subject that comes up later in the Documentation.

Requirements

On Linux you will need an apache web server installed with php. I use php7. I use php7.2 but robopages does run on most older php versions too.

However

On some linux desktop installations you might have to add an xml processing module manually. I use the php7.2-xml module. Php7 is not a requirement but xml parsing is a requirement.
On a recent desktop installation I had to do the following:
sudo apt-get install php7.2-xml (in addition to apache2 and php7).

Command Line Administration

Unzip the sources into the DOCUMENT_ROOT of an apache web server. Everything should run. The safest way to use Robopages is to administer by hand, from a Terminal window, using scp ssh bash sed perl awk etc. You can make the document root belong to you rather than the web server process and chmod -R everything to 755 or even 555 The plugins/LOGS directory will either have to belong to the web server or be chmod -R 777 Look in commandLineUtils for a few handy perl scripts that make thumbnails, slideshows and link ordering files (dirlinks).

Point your browser at the intallation.

Now add and populate directories under the fragments directory. For each such new subdirectory you may want to make hidden/pics and hidden/thumbs subdirectories. Images in hidden/pics will be visible to the fragments, but will not appear as links in the dynamicNavigation division. Edit mime_types.ini as needed. Files with suffixes appearing in mime_types.ini will become clickable download links, with the exceptions of images (jpg,jpeg,gif,png), fragments (*.htm) and text files (*.txt). Those three will be used as displays in the #main-disp division, rather than as download links.

Each such new directory under fragments can have an optional dirlinks file, which governs the top-to-bottom ordering of dynamic links. Examine the examples and edit as necessary.

New layouts will require new or edited css files, plus new layout definitions as defined in the layouts directory. Use teh existing layouts as a starting point. New system images (backgrounds, button faces etc) should be installed in the systemimages directory. Any layout is possible.

To make an entirely new layout, read the Documentation. Then edit the default layouts/robo.xml or create new layout.xml files in the layouts directory. If you know how to do these command line things you won't need much installation instruction.

Admin GUI

Robopages has an admin GUI for users who aren't linux/unix terminal hackers, who still want to do the bulk of their own page updating work.

Admin GUI users will probably need the help of real keyboard admin to get things up and running. Adn then they can take over from there.

To have and Admin GUI installation that works you have to make the document root belong to the web server process. Then chmod -R 555 or 755 the document root. The GUI codes will manipulate file permissions from there on out, making the document root recursively writable during an admin session, and then back to read only once done (if and only if the admin remembers to click the "Logout" button as a final step.

More Admin GUI documentation will happen eventually.