WebSubRev v0.64 (beta): Web-software for Conference Submission and Review

  Written by Shai Halevi <[email protected]> from IBM Research
  Distributed under the Common Public License (CPL v1.0)
  See http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cpl1.0.php


NOTE: The description below was last updated sometime in 2009.
      While most of it is still valid, some could be badly out of date.


Installing the software:
========================
One of the goals of this software was to make administration as easy
as possible. In principle, to install this software you just unpack
the zip file in some directory in your web tree (call it the BASE
directory), point your browser at that directory and off you go.

However, this simple method of installation requires the web-server to be
able to write files in the web-tree, which in some cases is considered
a security risk. I therefore provide also a non-web-based installation
method, as explained below.

Prerequisites:
--------------
This is a PHP/MySQL software, which means that to use it you must have
a MySQL server and a PHP engine (and your web-server must supports PHP
and MySQL). I tested the software with PHP 4.3.9 and MySQL 4.1.20 (and
earlier versions of it were tested with PHP 4.3.2 and MySQL 3.23). It
may work even with older versions but I cannot test it. Also, proper
functioning of this software depends on "proper" functioning of you
web-server. In particular, some issues that I came across are:

* The web-server (and the PHP engine) must be willing to upload
  files. For example, in one system that I used to test it, the PHP
  engine was configured to only allow uploads of files upto 500KB (and
  I was wrecking my brains as to why I can only upload pdf and not
  postscript files..) In my case it turned out that I had to change
  the parameter LimitRequestBody in php.conf (which on that system was
  somewhere under /etc/httpd/).

* The web-server must be able to send email. For example, if this is a
  Windows machine then the variable SMTP in php.ini should be set
  correctly.

* If the server is set-up with PHP in safe mode, then everything under
  the BASE directory must have same owner. (Also everything under the
  UPLOAD directory -- see below.) If safe_mode_gid is set in php.ini
  then instead of having the same owner they need to have the same
  group.

Some of the functionality of this package also depends on the availability
of external programs. Currently the only parts of the functionality that
need external programs are preparing an archive file with all the
submissions (which needs either the Archive_Tar PEAR library or the
tar or zip programs), and stamping the submissions with a header
saying "do not ditribute" (which needs auxilary program to convert
between PDF and Postscript). See some more details in the file 
implementation.html under the documentation directory.


Web-based installation:
-----------------------
To use this method, simply copy the contents of the webtree directory
to somewhere in your web tree (call it the BASE directory), making sure
that the web-server has permission to write in the "init" sub-directory
of the BASE directory.

During the installation process you would need to specify another local
directory where the uploaded submissions would be stored, called the
UPLOAD directory. If you don't specify anything, the UPLOAD directory
defaults to the subdirectory "subs" under the BASE directory. The UPLOAD
directory need not be in the web-tree, but the web server must be able to
read and write in that directory. 

After copying the files to the BASE directory (and setting the permissions),
point your browser to the page chair/initialize.php under the BASE directory.
You will be asked to provide various details (including the UPLOAD directory
and the MySQL access details), and these values will be used to initialize
the site. You will then be taken directly to the customization page in order
to customize the site for the conference (see below). At this point the web
server no longer needs to write to the "init" subdirectory, so you can change
the permissions to make that directory read-only.


Non-web-based installation:
---------------------------
An alternative method of installation (in Unix systems) is to change
directory to the directory where you unzipped this software (above the
"webtree" and "tools" directories) and from the command prompt do

  % ./tools/mkNewConf.sh confname

where confname is a short-name for the conference (e.g., xyz2007). It is
recommended that you read this script before running it, and you can
optionally modify it to set some default values.

This shell script will ask you for the locations of the BASE and UPLOAD
directories (and other parameters) and then it will install the software
in the BASE directory, setting the permissions as needed. The script will
then print out the username and password that are needed in order to access
the customization page. 


A word about web-server configuration:
--------------------------------------
The Web server should refuses to serve anything from the sub-directories
"includes", "init", and "subs" (under the BASE directory): If the server
agrees to serve content from subs/ and the installation uses the default
setting of putting the submissions there, then anyone who knows the
internals of the system would be able to download these submission.

There are already .htaccess files for Apache with the appropriate 
directives in place, but these must be enabled by setting the option
  AllowOverride Limit
on the container directory in the apache configuration file. 


Customizing the site:
---------------------
Before it can be used, the site still needs to be customized for the
conference. This is done from the page chair/customize.php under the
BASE directory. In this page the program chair can specify the conference
name, deadlines, program-committee members and many other parameters.
Links are provided from this page to the documentation page, where you can
find some additional explanations about the role of different parameters.
All the parameters that are specified in this page can be modified later
from the administration page. 

Once the customization is done, the site is ready to accept submissions.
You are shown a receipt page that includes links to the submissions
page and the administration page, as well as the username and password
that you need in order to access the administration page. Also, an email
message with the same information is sent to the program chair.


Experimenting with the software:
--------------------------------
I wrote a small testing package for the purpose of experimenting with
the software. To use this package, copy the contents of the "testOnly"
subdirectory to the BASE directory where you installed the software
itself *before* you customize the installation. This testing package
adds 53 dummy submissions and 17 dummy PC members to the conference
database.


Troubleshooting:
----------------
Most of the parameters of the software are stored in the "parameters"
table in the database. The details of the database itself are stored
in the file init/confParams.php under the BASE directory. If you have
problems with the software, looking at these parameters may provide
some hints as to the source of the problem.