One of the core tenets of Metavus is the importance of getting you up and running as quickly and easily as possible.

Download

The current version of Metavus is 1.0.1.

DOWNLOAD METAVUS

Installation

Installation of Metavus usually takes less than five minutes.

Requirements

Metavus is designed to run on a web server with a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack.

The minimum required PHP version is 7.1.  The minimum required MySQL version is 5.0.  (MariaDB may also be used, in place of MySQL.)  (PHP 7.1 was released in 2016, so most servers put online in the last five years or that are older but actively-maintained should work fine.)

Steps

  1. Download the Metavus distribution package from the link above.
  2. Create a new database for Metavus on your web server, and a MySQL (or MariaDB) user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
  3. Unzip the Metavus package and upload the files to the desired location on your web server.
  4. Access your new Metavus installation using a web browser (go to, for example, “http://example.com” or “http://example.com/collection/”, depending on your domain and which directory you uploaded the files to), and follow the instructions on that page to complete the installation.

Notes

  • The database for a new installation of Metavus should be empty when starting the installation.
  • If you want Metavus to live in the root of your domain (e.g. “http://example.com”), upload the files to the root directory of your web server.
  • If you want Metavus to live in its own subdirectory under your domain (e.g. “http://example.com/collection/”), then create an appropriately-named directory on your server (like “collection”), and upload the files to that directory.
  • The URL for your site should match where you uploaded your files.  So if you uploaded them to the root directory, you would go to “http://example.com”, while if you uploaded them to a subdirectory called “collection”, you should visit “http://example.com/collection/”.

Upgrading

Like the installation, upgrading Metavus to the latest version is designed to be quick and easy.

To upgrade to a new version of Metavus, just download the Metavus package, unzip the package and upload the files to your site, and then visit your site with your browser.  The upgrade will be run automatically.

The files unique to your site are all stored in the “local” directory, except for the “.htaccess” file in the base directory;  everything else in the directory tree are Metavus distribution files.

Change Log

Version 1.0.1 – Released October 24, 2022

ADDED

  • Added new “insert with caption” buttons (“Insert-R-C” and “Insert-L-C”), available when editing items with Image fields (e.g. Blog entries).
  • Provide an example configuration file for running Metavus with an nginx web server.
  • Add the account activation link to the user editing page (for unactivated users), to make it easier to send to users if needed.
  • Collage plugin: Added “Order Persistence Period” configuration setting, that determines how frequently the order of images changes.
  • NEW PLUGIN: NavEditor — Provides simple editing of the main navigation options in the default interface.

CHANGED

  • WYSIWYG editing (e.g. for Paragraph fields) now uses a whitelist for allowed CSS attributes, rather than a blacklist.
  • When editing users, select the default user interface for users who do not currently have a user interface set.
  • Default interface: Focus is now automatically switched to search box when “Search” is clicked.
  • Default interface: Footer revamped to be more responsive.
  • Default interface: Improved responsiveness in main navigation and on most forms.
  • Default interface: Set <pre> elements to wrap within the content area to prevent poorly-formatted content from breaking the layout.
  • Blog plugin: Changed teaser break marker to explicit ‘–‘ instead of double blank line.
  • Blog plugin: Whitespace is now explicitly disallowed in clean URLs.
  • Blog plugin: Do not display “Notify Subscribers” buttons for blogs that are not configured for sending notifications.
  • Collage plugin: Revised image selection to prevent adjacent repeated images.

FIXED

  • Fixed issue that caused the port number to be omitted on some internal links when running on a non-standard port.
  • Fixed manual rebuilding of recommender database.
  • Fixed issue with exception occurring when viewing a folder with bad parameter values in the URL.
  • Change file length column in database (Files:FileLength) to BIGINT UNSIGNED to support very large files.
  • Revise record editing to not to use lookbehind assertions for compatibility with Safari.
  • Fixed escaping of single quotes in alt text for image “Insert” buttons. 
  • Fix a bug wrapping long lines in HTML messages that produced a mix of “\r\n” and “\r” line endings when “\r\n” was requested.
  • Fixed error that occurred due to undefined variable when exporting controlled vocabularies from within the metadata field editor. 
  • Fixed account request to make sure that default values for the User schema are used in all cases. 
  • Mailer plugin: Fixed background email sending to use correct object type, instead of always using Record. 
  • Mailer plugin: Fix bug that caused an exception when when a template that expected a resource is used in a context where no resource is available. 
  • UrlChecker plugin: Fix bug that prevented data for deleted records from being cleaned out. 

Version 1.0.0Released July 19, 2022

Initial release.