YaWPS FAQ

General Questions

Q : What is YaWPS?

A : YaWPS (Yet another Web Portal System) is a lightweight web portal system for medium- or small-sized Internet or Intranet sites written in Perl.

Q : What can YaWPS do?

A : Some functions are still in development. Here's a small list of implemented features:

  • User management
  • News/Comment system
  • Topic/Article management
  • Links management
  • Forums
  • Surveys
  • Statistics
  • Template based layout (HTML4 validated)
  • Theme selection
  • Multiple language support
  • Site administration
  • Search functions
  • Top 10 Display
  • Help System
  • Module support
  • And many more...

Q : Is there a demo of YaWPS?

A : Check out the online demo.

Q : Is YaWPS free?

A : YaWPS has been released under the terms of the the GNU/GPL license - so it's completely free as long as you obey some simple conditions.

Q : What programming language is used?

A : YaWPS has been written in Perl.

Q : Do I need Perl installed on the server? What version?

A : Perl 5 is required to run YaWPS. Recommended webserver software is Apache. YaWPS has also been successfully tested on Microsoft IIS and some other webservers.

Q : Do I need any extra libraries?

A : YaWPS only uses Perl 5 standard modules, which makes it very flexible.

Q : Does YaWPS use an SQL database as the backend?

A : No, YaWPS uses text files to store its data.

Q : Is YaWPS a WYSIWYG editor? Do I still need to know HTML?

A : YaWPS is a simple tool to administrate websites, thus there aren't any fancy gimmicks for creating web documents, so you still need to know HTML, but YaWPS will speed up your site maintenance.

Q : What's the current status of YawPS?

A : YaWPS is still under development. Expect more advanced releases of YaWPS in the near future.

Q : What languages are supported by YaWPS?

A : Many languages are supported. Check out the YaWPS download section. It's very easy to implement other languages as well (only one speechfile for a language!).

Installation Questions

Q : How do I install or upgrade my YaWPS?

A : Please READ the Howtos that came with the YaWPS package (they are located in the docs directory).

Q : Why am I getting a 500 Server Error?

A : This error can be caused by various configuration problems:

  • Make sure you uploaded all CGI files in ASCII mode (check if they are uploaded completely).
  • Check your scripts and folders permissions (i.e. chmod all cgi files to 755).
  • Check the path to Perl in every CGI file (i.e. #!/usr/bin/perl).
  • Check your settings in yawpsrc.pl. Make sure you've entered an absolute path for $cfg{scriptdir}. Check if you've escaped the @ sign in $cfg{webmaster_email} with a backslash (i.e.: my\@email.com).

Q : Why am I getting a Sofware Error "Can't locate <SOME_LIBRARY> in @INC"?

A : See the above answer. Make sure your settings in yawpsrc.pl are ok. Make sure ALL permissions are properly set!

Q : How to get over 'premature end of script headers'

A : Make sure you check /usr/bin/perl or whereever your perl file is and make sure that it is executable by the web browser.

Q : How can I resolve the "You are not authorized for this action!" error?

A : Check, if you're user profiles are saved in UNIX-mode. If not you've to remove the DOS-Linefeeds.

Q : How can I install YaWPS under mod_perl?

A : Edit the startup.pl file. You will need to change line 13 that says use lib qw(/var/www/perl/yawps); /var/www/perl/yawps needs to be changed to the path of your YaWPS installation. Make sure that the startup.pl is loaded when Apache starts (edit your httpd.conf). Restart the webserver. For detailed information about mod_perl check out the mod_perl documentation site.

Q : How can I install YaWPS on a Windows box?

A : Open yawpsrc.pl and set $cfg{scriptdir} to the absolute path to your YaWPS directory (i.e. c:/inetpub/wwwroot/YaWPS). Open all CGI files and modify the shebang line (i.e. #!perl). It seems that you have to remove the -T switch for faultless operation. Set the permissions on the db-folder to read/write/execute for IUSR_HOSTNAME (substitute HOSTNAME with the computer's hostname YaWPS is running on). For a general Howto on configuring Perl for Windows check out the Microsoft Knowledge Base article HOW TO: Configure and Test a PERL Script with IIS 4.0, 5.0, and 5.1.