README

Notes for Diogenes

PRESENTATION
------------

Diogenes is a content management system that allows you to quickly create and
host web sites for communities. It was written by the Polytechnique.org
team. More information can be found on the Diogenes project page :

  http://opensource.polytechnique.org/diogenes/

It is released under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL) version 2. The 
full text of this license can be found in the COPYING file included in this
distribution.


DOCUMENTATION & INSTALLATION
----------------------------

The documentation for Diogenes, including installation instructions can
be found here:

  http://doc.polytechnique.org/diogenes/


CUSTOMISING DIOGENES
--------------------

Diogenes provides several means of customising its look and behaviour.

 * CONFIGURATION FILE

The first thing you can modify is Diogenes's configuration file called 
"diogenes.config.inc.php". To have a list of the values you can assign, take a
look at the file called "diogenes.globals.inc.php".

 * SUBCLASSING DIOGENES'S CLASSES

Diogenes is written in Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), and it is possible to
specify the classes to use from the configuration file. For instance, if you
want to change the look and/or behaviour of Diogenes's toplevel pages you would :

- create a class called "CustomToplevel" for instance, which derives from 
  "DiogenesToplevel".  Let us say this class is stored in a file called
  "custom.toplevel.inc.php".

- include "custom.toplevel.inc.php" from your configuration file like this :

  require_once 'custom.toplevel.inc.php';

- tell Diogenes to use your CustomToplevel class to display toplevel pages by
  setting the following in your configuration file :

  $globals->toplevel = "CustomToplevel";