1 WEBCIT for the Citadel/UX System
4 Copyright (C) 1996-2003 by the authors. Portions written by:
10 This program is free software released under the terms of the GNU General
11 Public License. Please read COPYING.txt for more licensing information.
17 Citadel/UX is a sophisticated BBS and groupware package which allows multiple
18 users to simultaneously access the system using a variety of user interfaces.
19 This package (WebCit) is a "middleware" package which presents an HTML/HTTP
20 user interface to the Citadel system.
22 What this means in practice is that after you've installed WebCit, users can
23 access all functions of your system using any web browser. Since this may be
24 the first Citadel experience for many new users, the screens have been designed
25 to be attractive and easy to navigate.
31 Unline some web-based packages, WebCit contains its own standalone HTTP
32 engine. As a result, you can get it running quickly without all that tedious
33 mucking about with Apache configuration files and directories. WebCit is not
34 intended to replace your Apache server, however -- it *only* provides a front
35 end to Citadel. If you do not have another web server running, you may run
36 WebCit on port 80; however, in the more likely situation that you have Apache
37 or some other web server listening on port 80, you must run WebCit on another
38 port. The default is port 2000.
40 To compile from source, enter the usual commands:
44 Then to test it, simply run the webserver:
47 You'll see a bunch of diagnostic messages on the screen. At this time you
48 can try it out. Point your web browser to WebCit using a URL such as:
50 http://your.host.name:2000
52 ...and log in. When you're satisfied that the program is working the way you
53 want it to, you should set it up to be automatically started by the system at
54 boot time. The recommended way to do this is with an entry in /etc/inittab,
55 because init can then automatically restart WebCit if it happens to crash for
58 The included "setup" program is basically just an installation helper that
59 asks a series of questions and then adds the appropriate line to inittab to
60 start WebCit. For most installations, this will do just fine. If you have
61 special circumstances, or if you'd prefer to configure WebCit manually, you
62 may skip the setup program. Instead, open /etc/inittab and add an entry
65 wc:2345:respawn:/usr/local/webcit/webserver
68 Several command-line options are also available. Here's the usage for
69 the "webserver" program:
71 webserver [-p localport] [-t tracefile] [-c] [remotehost [remoteport]]
75 webserver [-p localport] [-t tracefile] [-c] uds /your/citadel/directory
79 -> localport: the TCP port on which you wish your WebCit server to run.
80 this can be any port number at all; there is no standard. Naturally,
81 you'll want to create a link to this port on your system's regular web
82 pages (presumably on an Apache server running on port 80).
84 -> tracefile: where you want WebCit to log to. This can be a file, a
85 virtual console, or /dev/null to suppress logging altogether.
87 -> The "-c" option causes WebCit to output an extra cookie containing the
88 identity of the WebCit server. The cookie will look like this:
89 Set-cookie: wcserver=your.host.name
90 This is useful if you have a cluster of WebCit servers sitting behind a
91 load balancer, and the load balancer has the ability to use cookies to
92 keep track of which server to send HTTP requests to.
94 -> remotehost: the name or IP address of the host on which your Citadel/UX
95 server is running. The default is "localhost". (NOTE: if you run
96 WebCit and the Citadel/UX server on different hosts, the real-time chat
97 screen will not work, due to the Java security model. Only the chat
98 window is written as a Java applet; everything else is plain HTML.)
100 -> remoteport: the port number on which your Citadel/UX server is running.
101 The default is port 504, the IANA-designated standard port for Citadel.
103 -> "uds" is a keyword which tells WebCit that you wish to connect to a
104 Citadel server running on the same computer, rather than using a TCP/IP
105 socket. /your/citadel/directory should be set to the actual name of the
106 directory in which you have Citadel installed
107 (such as /usr/local/citadel). If you run Citadel and WebCit on the same
108 computer, this is recommended, as it will run much faster.
114 WebCit contains a small amount of graphics (buttons, etc.) which are kept
115 in its "static" subdirectory. All site-specific graphics, however, are
116 fetched from the Citadel server.
118 The "images" directory on a Citadel/UX system contains these graphics. The
119 ones which you may be interested in are:
121 -> background.gif: a background texture displayed under all web pages
122 -> hello.gif: your system's logo. It is displayed along with the logon
123 banner, and on the top left corner of each page.
129 WebCit contains support for calendaring and scheduling. In order to use it
130 you must have libical v0.24 (or newer) on your system. You must also be
131 running a Citadel server with calendaring support. The calendar service will
132 be automatically configured and installed if your host system supports it.
138 That's all you need to know to get started. If you have any questions or
139 comments, please visit UNCENSORED! BBS, the home of Citadel/UX, at
140 uncensored.citadel.org.