CMS, WEB DEVELOPMENT

Installing GetSimple CMS

2015-09-15_080405

Sometime long ago in this galaxy, not one far, far away,  I installed a LocalHost version of GetSimple CMS on Windows 7 XAMPP. 

GetSimple is an alternative to big SQL database-driven content management systems like WordPress. According to the site, GetSimple is an XML-based, standalone, fully independent and lite Content Management System. Without a database program, some of the security and complexity problems theoretically should go away. Plus, for smaller, less content-driven sites, there’s no need for the overhead.

These are my install notes.

  1. Install XAMPP. My install of choice was the “Lite” portable version from SourceForge: “xampp-portable-win32-5.6.12-0-VC11.7z”
  2. Unzip and put xampp folder to the root drive of choice (C:). Do not try to be clever and rename the folder something cute like “_XAMPP.” There are config files that will get lost and cause confusion and delay. Obviously, I’m speaking from experience.
  3. Unzip the file: GetSimpleCMS_3.3.7.zip This will give you a folder GetSimpleCMS_3.3.7.
  4. Inside this folder is another folder with the same name (this one has the files). For simplicity, rename internal GetSimpleCMS_3.3.7 folder to getsimple
  5. Put the internal getsimple folder into C:\xampp\htdocs\
  6. Fire up XAMPP and get Apache and MySQL running
  7. In your browser, type: https://localhost/getsimple/admin/ or https://127.0.0.0/getsimple/admin/ 

I installed the latest version of XAMMP and GetSimple 3.3.7 using  the above  instructions with no problems, until I got around to changing the password. For grins and giggles, I was working with Chrome on localhost and I got an error message about certificates. I need a certificate for localhost? Hmm. It was probably because I used the https:// instead of http://.

To resolved this, I typed this into my browser (chrome):

chrome://flags/#allow-insecure-localhost

Clicked on Enable the Allow invalid certificates from resources loaded from localhost.

On another install, when I changed my password, I got an error message, “CSRF Detected!” I should probably mention that I was running in a Win7 VirtualBox. I got out of admin and re-logged in, changed the default password, and everything was fine. Easy fix.