Here is the solution to a minor, but annoying problem I was having with some installations of OsCommerce. When saving an edit for a category, which already had an image file in the database, the image association would be lost and the error ‘IMAGE DOES NOT EXIST’ would be displayed. The workaround was to use the browse field to populate the image field each time you edited a record.

I had searched for the solution a number of times, but came up dry. Recently, however, when researching a contribution that added a text description for a category, I found the solution in the readme file (not available to search engines):

CHANGES TO admin/categories.php

CAREFUL: These are not trivial changes. There is a lot of code here.

1) Locate the following line (approximately line 80) (image update bug repair provided in the bugs section on oscommerce.com):
if ($categories_image = new upload(‘categories_image’, DIR_FS_CATALOG_IMAGES)) {
tep_db_query(“update ” . TABLE_CATEGORIES . ” set categories_image = ‘” . tep_db_input($categories_image->filename) . “‘ where categories_id = ‘” . (int)$categories_id . “‘”);
}

REPLACE those 3 lines with the following 5 lines:
$categories_image = new upload(‘categories_image’);
$categories_image->set_destination(DIR_FS_CATALOG_IMAGES);
if ($categories_image->parse() && $categories_image->save()) {
tep_db_query(“update ” . TABLE_CATEGORIES . ” set categories_image = ‘” . tep_db_input($categories_image->filename) . “‘ where categories_id = ‘” . (int)$categories_id . “‘”);
}

The comment says “image update bug repair provided in the bugs section on oscommerce.com,” which I was never able to find.

The best open source social networking script I’ve found by far is Elgg. Developed as sort of a “myspace for academics,” Elgg is a powerful social networking solution for any organization. Reasonably easy to install and customize, I’d recommend Elgg for any company or organization that wants to get up and running quickly and inexpensively.

When I say “reasonably easy to install” I mean, not as easy to install as open source web applications like Drupal, Joomla or Oscommerce, but with a little bit of server setting knowledge, and root access to your server, you should have few problems. Installation on a shared server could be a different story. Here are some posts describing some problems, solutions, and addtional info:
Adding Google Analytics to an ELGG Installation
ELGG Social Networking on Shared Hosting

I have a demo up here at http://www.fanclubhelper.com. Feel free to join, set up a community, customize your homepage, and generally test it out.

I’m currently testing out some open source social networking web applications that compare to Myspace. The most promising at the moment seems to be Elgg (don’t ask me what it means). AroundMe looks good too, but I read a comment on their blog that it wasn’t quite ready yet.

Elgg is a little more difficult to install than other open source applications out there. That is, if you are installing it on a shared hosting account. There are two obstacles you will need to overcome. First of all .htaccess is probably not enabled for your account, and when the Elgg .htaccess starts trying to do things, your server will choke with a 500 Server Error. So you need to have your hosting support person enable .htaccess for the directories you will install Elgg in.

That’s not all though. My host (hostmysite.com) didn’t like the following in the Elgg .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

These are mod_rewrite directives. They had me comment them out and added the statements to their own special configuration file. My current .htaccess just has the Rewrite rules listed.

I found a lot of posts from people looking for installation support for this issue, and what a lot of the well intentioned developers trying to help didn’t understand (or didn’t communicate) is that these seemingly simple settings can become complex on shared hosts. For security, processes can be disabled, or configuration can be more complex than if you own your own box.

Hopefully this helps anyone having 500 server errors when installing Elgg on a shared host.

Check out my Elgg installation at Fan Club Helper