Symphero::Web is a part of Symphero open source e-commerce suite. It can
also be used as a general purpose web templating system that allows you
to create arbitrary complex web pages and process them in rather optimal
way.

Most interesting features of Symphero::Web are:
 * works with CGI or mod_perl (mod_perl is recommended for production
   grade sites).
 * site can replace or modify standard Symphero::Web objects if required
   by overriding or extending their methods. You do not need to
   re-implement entire object to make a site specific change.
 * site can create any extension objects or embed third-party extensions
   as well.
 * one server can serve arbitrary number of Symphero::Web sites each
   with however extended fucnctionality without creating any confilcts.
 * there are standard objects that support e-commerce functionality that
   is enough to implement amazon-style e-commerce sites relatively
   easy. That includes credit card authorization, strong cryptography,
   users database, products database, orders database, shipping tracking
   and so on.

INSTALLATION
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Install it in a usual way, just say:

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

Saying "install Symphero::Web" from CPAN shell is a good way too.

When you run "perl Makefile.PL" you will be asked for Symphero::Web home
directory. Feel free to point it somewhere inside your home directory
if you do not feel like modifying /usr/local/symphero (suggested
default). This is a directory where symphero.pl CGI and mod_perl handler
would be placed along with default site and default templates. That
means that entire path to that directory should be world-readable (or at
least web-server readable).

NOTE: On FreeBSD 4.x (or probably with just some older version of
MakeMaker) there is a problem with installing to /usr/local/symphero -
somehow MakeMaker translates it to $(PREFIX)/symphero and PREFIX is
/usr. I do not yet have a solution for that other then installing it
somewhere outside /usr/local.

FIRST-TIME RUNNING AND TESTING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After you installed Symphero::Web you can try it in web
environment. Configure your Apache server so that it would execute
(from now on I assume that Symphero::Web was installed into
/usr/local/symphero) /usr/local/symphero/cgi-bin/symphero.pl when
someone types URL like http://company.com/cgi-bin/symphero.pl. Here is
an example configuration for that:

 <VirtualHost 10.0.0.1:80>
  ServerName   test.company.com
  ServerAlias  test.company.com
 
  ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/    /SYMPHERO/cgi-bin
   Options     +ExecCGI
   SetHandler  cgi-script
  </Directory>
 
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule  ^/images/(.*)$	/home/am/s4exp/projects/foocom/images/$1	[L]
  RewriteRule  ^/(.*)$		/home/am/s4exp/bin/symphero.pl/foocom/$1	[L]
 </VirtualHost>

SITE DEVELOPMENT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CORE CODE DEVELOPMENT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you plan to make changes to the Symphero::Web code (which is not
recommended unless you participate in official development) please read
devsite/README for instructions.