Documentation: Prerequisites

Server Software

In order for HTML Master Pages to work, you must have or install the following software onto your web server:

  1. Apache's httpd web server
  2. PHP 5.3 (or higher)
  3. libxml for PHP (and -- if you are using a Windows server -- activate it in your php.ini configuration file)

Your server's operating system shouldn't be relevant as long as you are able to run all of the required software. It may be possible to run HTML Master Page on other web server software as long as a PHP application like HTML Master Pages can be configured and run as an interceptor/handler for HTML (such as .htm and .html) and PHP-generated HTML files (such as .phtml). However, these alternative installations haven't yet been explored at the time of publishing these instructions.

For Do-It-Yourself Web Developers

In addition to installing or having access to the specific server-side software listed above, you must also have access to:

  1. Directly edit your Apache configuration via at least one of:
    1. read & write permissions to the main Apache configuration files,
    2. read & write permissions to the included Apache configuration file that drives your specific web-site (i.e.: your virtual host configuration file; something like your-web-site.conf),
    3. read & write permissions to the .htaccess file that controls your entire web-site, or
    4. a server administrator who will do any of the above for you.
  2. In whatever Apache configuration mechanism you have access to, you must be able to set the following configuration options:
    1. Action
    2. AddHandler
    3. DirectoryIndex (this one is not actually required, but is a very-nice-to-have for reasons discussed in the Walk-Through Example)
    4. ErrorDocument (another extremely-nice-to-have, but not actually a required option)
  3. Ability to edit files on your web-site by whatever means are supplied to you by your service provider (or whatever means that you grant yourself if you own and operate your own web server
  4. At least a fundamental competency with HTML

Optional Requirements for Web Hosting Providers

If you would like to deploy HTML Master Pages for all of your customers in a hosted environment, you will need:

  1. Direct access to your main Apache configuration files or you will need to add a few configuration settings to each virtual host configuration that you want to have access to HTML Master Pages in order to set:
    1. php_value include_path
    2. ScriptAlias
    3. Action
    4. AddHandler
    5. DirectoryIndex (as above, this one is not actually required, but is a very-nice-to-have for reasons discussed in the Walk-Through Example)
    6. ErrorDocument (again, extremely-nice-to-have, but not actually a required option)