Porting Sites to CARMA

CARMA About CARMA CARMA Requirements CARMA Changelog Setup Setting Up CARMA MySQL Settings Add Site Porting Sites to CARMA Moving CARMA Sites Admin The Sites Admin Site Sections Publish Mode Content Set Schedule Templates Admin Members Area Templates Tour Templates Member Favorites Smarty Loops Smarty Caching Smarty print array Base Templates User Variables Rating System   Template Functions CARMA Template Functions carma_actor_photo_name carma_comments_display carma_comments_form carma_count carma_favorite carma_gal_custom carma_get_extended carma_list carma_list_favorites carma_list_gals carma_list_third_party_content carma_list_videos carma_login_log carma_most_viewed carma_newest carma_news carma_poll carma_retrieve_sections carma_search carma_actors_search carma_show_gal carma_show_video carma_top_actors carma_top_rated carma_upcoming print_page_numbers Template Function Aliases carma_comment_display carma_display_comment carma_display_comments carma_extended carma_extended_data carma_get_extended_data carma_list_all Common Parameters assign assign_prefix count data_only display_on_assign start tpl Schedule Admin The Schedule Admin Scheduling Content Content Set Schedule Calendar Snapshot News Admin The News Admin Add News Auto News Feedback Admin The Feedback Admin The Polls Admin Gallery Content Admin The Gallery Content Admin Adding Content Edit Image Adding Image Text Content Set Locations Content Set Categories Managing Thumbnails Watermarking Image Removal Image Order Rotate Image Image Quality Video Content Admin The Video Content Admin Adding Content Video Clips Out of Order Video Thumbnails Content Set Locations Content Set Categories Video Format Flash Player Generate Flash Videos Using mp4 Videos Video Content Names Thumbnails Admin The Thumbnails Admin Image Thumbnail Video Thumbnails Third Parties Admin Third Party Content Scan Content Admin Scan Content Actors Admin The Actors Admin Add Actor Actor Photos Actor Documents Manage Attribute Types Creating Actor Pages Members Admin The Members Admin Member Details Stats Admin The Stats Admin Site Statistics Member's Statistics Content Statistics Actor's Statistics Accounts Admin Accounts Admin Add Account Access Levels Configuration Admin The Configuration Admin CARMA Configuration Variables Video Format Troubleshooting Common Errors Extras The Support Admin Admin Areas CARMA Home Pseudo Streaming Flash Player Using mp4 Videos Zipping Content Third Party Content X-Sendfile Xmoov-php TMMid

The first step of porting an existing membership site to CARMA is setting up a test site. This lets you continue using your existing site until your CARMA-powered site is ready. Choose a domain name for your test site. For example, testsite.example.com. Have your host setup testsite.example.com on the same server as your actual site, add the site in CARMA, and configure the new site.

While configuring your new site, try to use relative URLs, not absolute URLs. You will need to update any absolute URLs when you go live. For example:

• Absolute URL: http://testsite.example.com/test.html
• Relative URL: /test.html

Note: because relative URLs are shorter, they take up less space. You save disk space and bandwidth, and your members can download pages faster.

Going Live

After the site is looking and working the way you want, make your Apache configuration for your actual site point to the same server directory as your testsite.example.com

For example, the following Apache site configuration,

ServerName testsite.example.com
DocumentRoot /path/to/members.yoursite.com

should be changed to:

ServerName actualsite.example.com
DocumentRoot /path/to/members2.yoursite.com

Your configuration might be slightly different but the general concept remains the same. Once the changes are made, restart Apache to apply the changes. Finally, you must replace the testsite.example.com hostname with the actual site hostname in CARMA's Site Admin. If the hostnames are wrong, CARMA can't load the correct site. For example, replace http://testsite.example.com with http://actualsite.example.com.

After that is done the only thing you have to do is update any remaining absolute URLs.