==============
ABOUT ANTVILLE
==============

Antville is an open source project aimed to the development of an 
"easy to maintain and use" weblog-hosting system. It is not limited to 
just one weblog, it can easily host up to several hundred or thousand 
weblogs (the number of weblogs is more limited by the site owner's 
choice and server power than software limitations).

Antville is entirely written in JavaScript and based on the Helma 
Object Publisher, a powerful and fast scriptable open source web 
application server (which itself is written in Java). Antville works 
with a relational database in the backend.


============================
ABOUT HELMA OBJECT PUBLISHER
============================

Helma Object Publisher is a web application server.

With Helma Object Publisher (sometimes simply refered to as Helma or 
Hop) you can define Objects and map them to a relational database 
table. These so-called HopObjects can be created, modified and deleted 
using a comfortable object/container model. Hence, no manual fiddling 
around with database code is necessary.

HopObjects are extended JavaScript objects which can be scripted using 
server-side JavaScript. Beyond the common JavaScript features, Helma 
provides special "skin" and template functionalities which facilitate 
the rendering of objects via a web interface.

Thanks to Helma's relational database mapping technology, HopObjects 
create a hierarchical structure, the Url space of a Helma site. The 
parts between slashes in a Helma Url represent HopObjects (similar to 
the document tree in static sites). The Helma Url space can be thought 
of as an analogy to the Document Object Model (Dom) in client-side 
JavaScript.


======
STATUS
======

Antville should be considered pre-release quality code. Although it is 
heavily used by severeal thousand users at http://www.antville.org 
chances are that there are still bugs hidden in this application (if 
you find one, please see belog). Antville can be used for production 
purposes, but please mind that the creators of Antville and Helma do 
not take any warranty (whichever kind).


===================
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
===================

To run Antville you need Helma Object Publisher (http://helma.org) and 
a relational database in the backend. Antville was tested with mySQL 
(http://www.mysql.com) and Oracle (v.8.1.7). For setting up either 
Helma Object Publisher or the database you decided to use please refer 
to their installation instructions. Since Antville sends confirmation 
mails to users (i.e. after registration or if they were added to the 
list of members of a site), you'll also need an up-and-running SMTP-
server (which you should specify in the server.properties in the 
directory where you installed Helma Object Publisher).


============
INSTALLATION
============

Antville comes with two SQL-scripts for creating the database needed 
by the application: for mySQL (antville_mysql.sql) and for Oracle 
databases (antville_oracle.sql) - the third one, antville_mckoi.sql, 
is only used for the Antclick-distribution of Antville.

Both scripts are not only creating the tables, indexes and initial 
records, but also the account used by the application to communicate 
with the database. The default username and password of this account 
is "antville", so you probably want to change that (you should!).

Please refer to the documentation of your database on how to run the 
appropriate script. After done so you'll have to modfiy the file 
"db.properties" in the directory where you installed the application. 
Depending on your database you should open either db.properties.mysql 
or db.properties.oracle and modify it to match the configuration of 
your database (if you changed the default username and password don't 
forget to change it here too!).

After done so save the modified file under the name "db.properties" in 
the same directory. Next open the file "app.properties" - it contains 
all basic file- and URI-path definitions needed by Antville. Don't be 
confused by the contents of the file, all you need to change for now 
is imgPath, filePath, imgUrl and fileUrl.

Finally, append the word "antville" to the file "apps.properties" 
located in the directory where you install Helma Object Publisher. The 
start up Helma, and with the first request you should see Antville's 
welcome page telling you how to proceed with configuration.


=====================================
DOCUMENTATION AND FURTHER INFORMATION
=====================================

To get the documentation and further information regarding Antville 
please refer to:
http://project.antville.org
http://macros.antville.org
http://help.antville.org

Feel free to ask any question regarding the application in 
http://project.antville.org

For further information about Helma http://helma.org generally is a 
good place. There is also a mailing-list about Helma-related stuff 
available at http://helma.org/lists/listinfo/hop.


==================================
BUG REPORTING AND FEATURE REQUESTS
==================================

If you find any bugs or have any ideas about new features, please post 
them to http://project.antville.org or send a mail to 
antville@helma.org. Since Antville is open-source, you're definetly 
encouraged to modify the application, but please keep us informed on 
what you do/did. For those of you who demonstrated a commitment to 
collaborative open-source development through sustained participation 
and contributions within the development of Antville, there will also 
be other ways to participate.

--
<0A> 2002, antville@helma.org
http://project.antville.org

This document was last modified on Monday 2 December 2002 by
robert@helma.org