What is pnRender and Xanthia TE ???

Topic:	What is pnRender and Xanthia TE ???
Vermillien Helper Posts: 155 Posted: 12.Mar 2004 - 08:26	I am new to Post Nuke, so I'm a bit confused and have been going in circles trying to find out what pnRender and XTE really are! Do I need these to run certain 3rd party modules??? I installed pnRender in my Post Nuke 7.2 and get the following error when I click on the module in my Administration: Fatal error: Failed opening required 'includes/classes/Smarty/core/core.assemble_plugin_filepath.php' (include_path='./:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home3/mysite/mydirectory/myotherdirectory/includes/classes/Smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1402 This is driving me nuts now, because I've seen this before when installing another 3rd party module. And for some odd reason, it's adding a 3 (as above) to my home directory....???? I have installed PostCalendar and pnESP and saw that they require Smarty (whatever that is) so I installed pnRender to remedy the problem. Both of these modules (from within the Administration) are defaulting to my PostGuestbook page. They were previously defaulting to another guestbook I had. So, I deactivated that guestbook and removed all the files for it..... Could someone point me in the right direction? I want to find out more about XTE, and if I need to have this installed, and also about pnRender (no documentation with the pnRender I downloaded). Do I need these items? :: confused again! ::
summae Freshman Posts: 4 Posted: 12.Mar 2004 - 09:12	I am thinking I should leave this to the experts, but am not sure how often they wander through here so.... XTE = Xanthia Template Environment/Engine, which has been adapted as the core theme/template engine for what will be the next major release of PostNuke, which will be .8. XTE is an integration and further development of pnRender and Xanthia. It is used to describe how to present the content of PostNuke and various modules, and at the moment is still somewhat cutting edge (some might even say bleeding edge). It is based on the Smarty database system, however it is not Smarty persay, and I am thinking should not be required to run other third party modules such as postcalendar, however I could Not research this as it was impossible for me to open the homepage of their development site http://www.postcalendar.tv . If this is the case, I'd have to recommend Not using it at the moment, as it sounds as if you were already having some difficulties in getting PostNuke and various additional modules to run smoothly. In general, my advice is to start with a clean, core installation of PostNuke, and then install extra modules, one by one, reading their installation and other documentation, (I cannot stress reading the documentation enough, it should have told you whether pnRender was required or not), and making sure they are functioning as expected before adding another module. This way, if something starts blowing up, at least you'll know What blew it up. So, unless the documentation States that another module Is required, adding another module will only complicate matters.
Vermillien Helper Posts: 155 Posted: 12.Mar 2004 - 09:28	Thank you so much for taking the time to explain this for me! I did install a new PN (7.2.6) just 3 weeks ago, and have been testing each module and reading the documentation first (learned my lesson with my previous version of PN - deleted the whole thing to start over). Some of the documentation included with these third party modules lack information, especially to new PN'rs like myself. I read through PostCalendar (and other calendars I tried) and it mentioned using Smarty, and had some Smarty docs in there, but doesn't tell me that I need to go download something else. Basically says install, initialize, and get going. Still trying to find a calendar to use on this site I'm working on, since it needs 2 calendars (Events is ok, but need a second one for a special group). Again, thanks alot for posting. Is there a site dedicated to XTE that I can review? -- Gravity Station _ Above and Beyond the Ordinary PN Web Hosting, 1-click installation from Fantastico, PN Customization too! GravityStation.com
Simon online Steering Committee Posts: 13427 Posted: 12.Mar 2004 - 13:21	There are problems using PostCalendar and pnESP with pnRender, because they were one step ahead of the pnDevelopment team and released their module with their own templating method, based on Smarty. Installing pnRender when these modules are active creates a conflict, preventing PostCalendar (and I believe pnESP) from working. Have a look at the release article for XTE RC2, at mods.postnuke.com, there are some solutions posted there. -- Regards, Simon itbegins.co.uk - Zikula Consulting Please read the Support Guide
Vermillien Helper Posts: 155 Posted: 14.Mar 2004 - 21:24	That makes sense. I didn't realize that these items needed to be deactivated before installing pnRender. In fact, pnRender is showing an error when I click on it's icon in the Admin/Modules. It's having problems calling Smarty (the filepath) and so is every other module that uses Smarty (pnAffiliate, zerocal, pnESP, and others) - I am wondering if it's because I have the core PN files within a directory under my "live" site (which is not Nuked yet). Could this possibly be screwing up the Post Nuke test site I'm working on? I don't know how else to test Post Nuke, other than placing it within a directory until I'm ready to upgrade my HTML site to PN. Is there some trick to this? I'm not familiar with all the files just yet, but suppose the 'filepath' could be changed somewhere in the ini files or something? (saw this mentioned in the Smarty documentation) but I don't know how, and don't want to mess anything up unless I know for sure. I will check out the article you linked to, and thanks for helping. Do you know of a solution to running a test site beneath my current site? Thanks!