General introduction

Dear reader

Welcome and thank you for choosing this product.

This program took years of hard development work and many hours that numerous helping hands invested by providing notices, suggestions and tests to steadily improve the quality of the program.

All these hours have been lots of joy to me and all those who have been working on this projects.

We hope that the result of our work will be useful and give you the same pleasure that we had programing it. Please provide us with your experiences and comments. If you got suggestions on how to improve this work, I will appreciate your e-mail.

Thomas Meyer

Yana supports the development of applications by providing ready-to-use components. Examples: user management, authentication, database API, or templates. In addition it helps developers to write clean code by enforcing the use of a 3 layer architecture. (Compare: "Model-View-Controler").

More features are in the following list:

• pre-installed programs:
  • free PHP guestbook, free search engine, free web-log
  • online administration
  • login- and user management for multiple users
  • pre-installed protection against unrequested ads and flooding
  • skinable and multilingual
• for developers:
  • supported database systems: MySQL, PostgreSQL, IBM DB2, Oracle DB (Oci), MS SQL-Server, text files
  • code generator creates complete applications on demand
  • runtime configurable, free combinable plug-ins
  • virtual database simulates database server on demand
  • extensive code- and class library
  • AJAX support
  • interface to run cron-jobs
  • prepared for portable applications on CD/DVD
• comprehensive manual with step-by-step installation instructions

The following minimum conditions have to be met so the program can run properly:

• Apache or compatible web server
• PHP 5.2 or later
• at least 5 MB free storage capacity
• a minimum of 32MB RAM (see also "php.ini-directives: memory_limit")

• to be able to use database features, PEAR-DB has to be installed as well.
• to be able to use image functions like CAPTCHA, the GD library has to be installed.
• If you decide to use a database, you may choose from: MySQL 4 or later, PostgreSQL 8.3 or later, Microsoft SQL-Server 2003 or later, DB2 V9, Oracle (Oci8). Recommendation: MySQL 5

The following configuration is recommended:

• current Xampp version (includes Apache, MySQL, mail server and PHP)
• Apache 2.0
• PHP 5 with PEAR-DB, GD library and XML parser
• MySQL 5

• SELinux: Some users have reported they had problems setting the right access restrictions for users and directories on systems that use the Linux extension "SELinux". If this is the case, please consult the SELinux documentation for more information on configuration. You should especially note the instructions for setting up policies.
• Suhosin extension: The "Suhosin" extension for PHP may cause problems with the library PCLZip, which is used in the installation program of the framework. In this case you may run the installation manually or try to deactivate Suhosin.
• MSSQL driver configuration: Users of MSSQL should check the driver settings in "php.ini" prior to setting a system in productive mode. Note the option "mssql.textlimit". Per default it is set to a limit of 4 kbyte. Please check if this setting is convenient for your purpose. If you plan to store texts or files larger than 4 kbyte in your database, you may want to adjust these settings to your needs.
• MSSQL connection problems: If you encounter difficulties while trying to connect with your database, make sure that you have the correct version of the file "ntwdblib.dll installed. The version which is shipped with PHP may not always be suitable for your version of the SQL server. If so, copy the correct file to your PHP installation directory. For further information see the PHP manual on the keyword MSSQL.
• PostgreSQL connection problems: Users of PostgreSQL who encounter problems connecting to the database should check the settings inside the "pg_hba.conf" file located in the directory 'data' of their postgres installation. This restricts access to the server for external users and may prevent a connection to the database.
• Safe-mode: The Yana Framework is fully compatible with PHP's safe-mode.

Note: If you created new skins, plug-ins or translations and believe these may also be of interest to other users, please let us know. We would be pleased to provide interesting solutions to other users for free.