Initial Configuration of Askbot

While most configuration settings for askbot can be done at any time through the web-interface, some manipulations on the server are still necessary.

Installing Askbot as a new Django project (standalone app)

When installing Askbot for the first time, you will need to initialize the site setup files by typing:

startforum

and answering the questions. The startforum script will ask you where to deploy Askbot. If you are in the directory where the Askbot project resides, you can answer . (. refers to the current directory). There may be an error message; ignore it.

Note

All Django sites have four project-wide files:

settings.py - the main settings configuration file
urls.py     - main url configuration
__init__.py - often empty but needed for Python
manage.py   - the hook allowing to run management commands

startforum adds those files to the directory you select (and some more things specific to Askbot).

Note that if you already have a Django site you will not want to use startforum, because you don’t want to just overwrite your existing settings.py. See below for instructions.

Another thing you have to do if you are creating a brand new Django project is edit the file settings.py. At the very minimum, you will need to provide the correct values to:

DATABASE_ENGINE = '' #e.g. 'mysql'
DATABASE_NAME = '' #name of the database you created, e.g. 'askbot'.
DATABASE_USER = '' #name of the database user, e.g. 'askbotuser'.
DATABASE_PASSWORD = '' #password to the database
CSRF_COOKIE_DOMAIN = ''#e.g. 'example.com' or 'askbot.example.com' (localhost/IP address for tests)

All values must be enclosed in single quotes, as shown above.

Note

The files settings.py and urls.py may also need to be touched up when you upgrate the software, because new versions may bring new dependencies and add new site urls.

Adding Askbot to an existing Django project

If you are adding askbot to an existing Django project, you will need to merge settings.py and urls.py into your project manually. The templates to be used can be found in the askbot/setup_templates subdirectory.