Tracker README

What is Tracker

Tracker is a small, web-based, database-driven tool for tracking and managing customers, sessions and orders for use in a photographic-studio environment. It can be used on a standalone PC or a central server in a networked environment.

From where can Tracker be downloaded?

Tracker can be downloaded from http://www.psyphi.net/projects/tracker/.

Prerequisites

As Tracker is a web-based application it should work equally well under Windows and UNIX. It should not be particularly resource-intensive and should run quite well on a modestly-specced computer.

Installing on Microsoft Windows

Apache

Download and install Apache as a service. Follow the Apache installation instructions. I install Apache under c:\core\httpd .

MySQL

Download and install MySQL as a service. Follow the MySQL installation instructions. I install MySQL under c:\core\mysql .

ActivePerl

Download and install ActivePerl. Follow the ActivePerl installation instructions. I install ActivePerl under c:\core\perl .

DBI & DBD::mysql (The Perl MySQL drivers)

Start a DOS prompt (start-menu->run->"cmd") and run c:\core\perl\bin\ppm
install DBI
install DBD-mysql

Tracker

Download and unzip tracker. I unzip tracker under c:\core\tracker . This should create three sub-directories:

cgi-bin contains the main executable.
modules contains the tracker libraries.
htdocs contains the tracker static content (images, html, stylesheets etc.)

Configuring MySQL

Create a database. Mine's called tracker01. Build the MySQL database according to the tracker schema.txt. Create a mysql user (I use trackerrw.

Configuring Apache

Configure Apache with a cgi-bin and htdocs according to the tracker httpd.conf. I set up tracker to respond on a virtualhost called "tracker" with it's own cgi-bin and htdocs. You could alternatively merge the tracker executable and the htdocs content with an existing document tree.

For Information

Tracker was developed using Emacs, Paintshop Pro, The GIMP, Apache 2.0.48, MySQL 4.0.17, MyODBC 3.51.06, ActivePerl 5.8.2.808 and MozillaFirebird 0.7, all on Microsoft Windows XP.

Usage, Costs, Licensing & redistribution

Tracker is free for personal and non-commercial use. Commercial use of Tracker is priced at £50 per seat. Tracker may be redistributed under the terms of the GPL. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.