Installation instructions Fabrik 2.x

From Fabrik

1. Go to the download page here: [Download Page]
2. Download Fabrik 2.1.1 (File name:com_fabrik_2.1.1.zip)
   Do not download or install the files under Fabrik Plug-ins (this is not the application) until after installing this file.
   
3. In Joomla click on Extensions->Install/Uninstall
   
4. Click on 'Browse' under Upload Package File and select the file you downloaded in step 2 (com_fabrik_2.1.1.zip)
5. Click on Upload File & Install.
6. You should see 3 success messages.
   
7. You can now access the Fabrik Application from the Components menu.
   

Important: Installation on some computers may take up to 1 minute. Don't browse away from the page untill you see 3 comments about installation of different parts of the package and a message about successful installation.

If you get an error message or the browser is still working after 10 minutes and showing nothing when trying to install via uploading the zip follow these instructions to install from the directory:

Unzip the com_fabrik zip on your computer.

1. Upload all files it to a folder on your server e.g. /usr/home/public_html/tmp/com_fabrik
2. Go to your site's administration page
3. Select Extensions->install/uninstall
4. In the 'Install from Directory' section, in the 'Install directory' field enter the path to which you uploaded your files e.g. /usr/home/public_html/tmp/com_fabrik
5.  Press the 'install' button next to the 'Install directory' field.

Nightlies

We now provide a nightlies page where a snapshot of the SVN code can be found:

http://fabrikar.com/nightlies

Upgrading

To upgrade from a previous version of Fabrik 2.0.x:

• Make a back up of your site's files and database tables
• Look at the code announcements forum to see if anything has changed which might effect how your fabrik pages work
• Do NOT unistall your previous version of Fabrik
• Follow the same procedure as if you were installing Fabrik for the first time - (see above for instructions)

How to handle development / Production environment

To move from a devlopment site manually export all your jos_fabrik_* tables from the dev site to the live site, using your database utility of choice (like phpMyAdmin, although I use, and thoroughly recommend, Navicat) along with copying any file based changes (like templates, plugin script files, etc).

After importing the Fabrik metadata tables, edit and save the default site connection in the Fabrik Connections tab, to force it to pick up the details from J! for the site database, otherwise Fabrik will be trying to connect to the database you exported your tables from.

If you've added elements to existing data tables, you'll need to do an "Update Database" on the Forms tab for any forms that have new elements. This basically does a sanity check of the element metadata against the underlying data tables, and creates any missing fields. If you've created any new data tables on the dev site, you'll need to import those along with the Fabrik metadata tables.

Its definitely advisable to use something like Akeeba (formerly known as JoomPack), to clone your live site to a sandbox and do a test run on before updating your live site, at least until you've built up enough experience to do it without any slipups. Even then, doing a complete Akeeba backup (which you can do with a single button click) before updating the live site is ALWAYS STRONGLY ADVISED!! Then if things do go pear shaped, you can restore your site with a single click.

If the changes you've made on your dev site are small, sometimes it's just easier to go and apply the changes by hand on the live site, rather than going through the export/import procedure.

We realize this while procedure is not optimal. But, for reasons too gory to go in to here, we gave up on trying to get Packages working in 2.0 on J! 1.5, as it just involved too many changes to the core code. Fabrik 3.0 will implement this correctly