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System Requirements

WebCarbon runs on Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X systems with Python 2.0 or higher installed and a CGI-capable Web server such as IIS or Apache. Python is available for free from http://www.python.org/. This version has been tested mostly on Windows NT 4 with IIS 4.

Installation (for Web Administrators)

  1. Install Python. The regular distribution from www.python.org will work, but for Windows, the ActiveState distribution from www.activestate.com has some optional extras that may be useful for other Python programs. Download the installer of your choice and run it.
  2. Copy the shared files (WebCarbon.py, HTMLFilter.py, CGIUtility.py) into any folder on your Python path. The lib/site-packages folder inside your Python program folder is usually a good choice. In some installations, to make replication of program updates between Web servers easier, we put the files into a shared Python programs directory and add that directory manually to the PYTHONPATH using the PythonWin IDE. I'll expand on this in a later draft.
  3. Copy WebCarbon.pycgi inside your Web root. A suggested path is:
    <your web root>/scripts/WebCarbon/WebCarbon.pycgi
    Note that this file is only a stub, and you already put the main program into the another folder. Most future updates to WebCarbon won't change this stub.
    (Also note than many IIS installations already have a "scripts" virtual directory that points to a scripts folder directly in Inetpub. So you can either get rid of that virtual directory or move the WebCarbon folder inside that folder.)
  4. Set up your Script Mappings so that the .pycgi extension triggers Python. For IIS, you can get the properties for the Scripts folder in MMC and add a new script mapping. Here's an example. The path given is for my installation of Python 2.1, so substitute the Python program folder that you installed it into.

    Extension: .pycgi
    Command: C:\Python21\Python.exe -u %s %s
    Make sure the "Scripting Engine" checkbox is checked.

  5. Set up your SMTP mail server and From addresses. Right now, this has to be done by editing the first few lines of WebCarbon.py.