[geeklog-devel] Minor suggestion for Geeklog

[Tom Willett]

I would like to make a minor suggestion that would make upgrades much easier 
and perhaps could avert a lot of install problems.

Have two configuration files.  One the normal config.php we are all familiar 
with.  The person installing geeklog should never make changes to this file.  
The other configuration file would contain things that must be changed and 
only the configuration options the installer wanted/needed to change.

Then the last thing in the normal config.php would be to include the 
site.config.php file.  The changes in the site.config file would override the 
normal config.php and everything would be good.  This has several advantages.

To upgrade, normally only minor or no changes would be required to the site 
config file and the normal config.php would be replaced.  No editing required.

Most of the paths, which people change when they shouldn't, would remain 
untouched in the normal config.php.  It would remove some of the temptation 
to mess with them.

This would only require the creation of a minimal site.config.php (name it 
something like site.config.php.example to prevent its overwriting the real 
site.config.ph) and the include in the normal config.php.  Of course you need 
to place warnings in the config.php to not make any changes in this file.

The same idea will work with language files and avert the problem of 
incomplete language files.  Always read the english file and then just 
overlay it with another language file if wanted.  Quick changes to the 
english file can be made and distributed and it will not break the others.  
This would only require some simple logic changes in the includes.


A minor change that would make things more robust.

--
Tom Willett
tomw at pigstye.net