Configuration

Author:Étienne Loks date:2012-10-08 Copyright:CC-BY 3.0

This documents presents the first steps to configure your Chimère.

The version has been updated for version 2.0.0.

If an usage to the CLI is required, your session has to be initialised with theses environment variables:

CHIMERE_PATH=/srv/chimere # change with your installation path
CHIMERE_LOCALNAME=mychimere # change with your local project name
CHIMERE_APP_PATH=$CHIMERE_PATH/$CHIMERE_LOCALNAME

When you have installed the application there is a few simple steps to follow to configure your Chimère.

Most of theses steps are done in the web administration pages.

If you are not familiar with Django-like administration pages you can look at the first paragraph of Administration where it is presented.

To access theses pages you have to identify you with an account with staff and superuser status.

A superuser account is created at the initialization of the database.

Configuring the sites framework

Sites framework allow you to serve the same content on different domains. Most of you will probably use only one domain but this unique domain has to be configured. This is done in the web administration interface in Sites > Sites You only need to change example.com by your domain name. If you forgot to do that functionality such as RSS feeds will not work properly.

Managing areas

An Area is the base of your map. It defines:

• a name: a human readable label for this area.
• an associated URN (not mandatory): the name of the area as a web ressource. In practice, if the area is not the default area the URN is used at the end of the default URL to access to this area. This is not mandatory but necessary for each area that is not the default one.
• a welcome message (not mandatory): this message is displayed once a day per user arriving on the map.
• an order (to sort areas).
• an availability.
• a default state. The /default/ area is viewed by default. Only one area can be the default: activating this state disable it on the possible other area with a default state.
• default checked categories (not mandatory).
• if categories are displayed dynamically (if dynamically is set, the end user only view categories witch have items on the map section the user currently see).
• categories restriction (not mandatory): if no restriction is set all categories are available.
• an external CSS file (not mandatory): an URL to an external CSS file.
• restriction on the bounding box: if set to restricted, the end user can’t pan outside the defined bounding box. Due to technical reasons, there is at this time no restriction on the zoom.
• a map bounding box: this is the area to display when arriving on the map. If the area is restricted it will be the bounding box that restrict the end user. Hold the control key, click and drag to draw the bounding box.
• available layers (not mandatory OSM Mapnik is used by default): OSM Mapnik render, OSM MapQuest render, OSM Transport Map render, OSM CycleMap are available by default. You can add new custom layer cf. Managing layers.

Areas are customizable directly on the web administration interface in Chimere > Areas.

As there is little chance that the default area is appropriate for you, you’ll have to set at least one default area.

Adding many area can be a mean to show your map in different flavors.

Managing users

If you are not the only administrator/moderator of this Chimère installation you have to create and manage account for the other users.

You can create a new superuser account with the CLI:

./manage.py createsuperuser

User password can be changed with the CLI (useful if you have forgotten your password):

./manage.py changepassword username

Users are customizable directly on the web administration interface in Auth/User.

To create a new account, simply click on the Add button near Users. Give a name and a default password (the user can change it on in own later).

Then complete the other pieces of information.

Check the case: Staff status (or this user will not be able to log to the administration website).

If this account is a new technical administrator, check Superuser status (this user must be trustworthy!). Otherwise you’ll have to give permissions to this new user. It is easier to don’t add permission manually but make this user member of a group.

Two type of default group are proposed: application administrator and moderator.

Moderator are limited to an Area (they only see items that are inside the bounding box). If a moderator manage many areas you’ll have to select many groups.

Detail of rights for default user/groups:

Task	Technical administrator	Application administrator	Moderator
User add/modify/delete	yes	no	no
Group add/modify/delete	yes	no	no
Property model add/modify/delete	yes	no	no
Import add/modify/delete	yes	no	no
Layer add/modify/delete	yes	no	no
News add/modify/delete	yes	yes	no
Area add/modify/delete	yes	yes	no
Icon add/modify/delete	yes	yes	no
Color/Color theme add/modify/delete	yes	yes	no
Category/Subcategory add/modify/delete	yes	yes	no
Point Of Interest add/modify/delete	yes	yes	yes
Route add/modify/delete	yes	yes	yes

Creating property models

A basic installation of Chimère permit to associate a name, a category, a description, dates, multimedia files, picture files, etc. for each geographic item.

You may want to add more custom fields like phone number or opening hours. For that all you have to do is to add a new property model (Chimere/Property model).

The administration page ask you for:

• a name,
• an order (to sort properties),
• an availability to the end user (this can be used to set hidden properties),
• a mandatory status,
• the categories the property applied to (if no categories selected it applied to all),
• the type: text, long text, password or date.

To make this property available it is necessary to reload your web server (the property is cached).

All forms are then automatically updated with this new field.

If you don’t want to allow add and modification of properties you can disable this form by setting CHIMERE_HIDE_PROPERTYMODEL to True in your local_settings.py file.