This is the twistranet project!

(c)2011 NumeriCube (http://www.numericube.com)

Official website: http://www.twistranet.com / French version on http://www.twistranet.fr

twistranet is an Enterprise Social Software. It's a Social Network you can use to help people collaborate. And it is also a nice CMS (Content Management System) with a social focus.

twistranet is published under the termes of the GNU Affero General Public License v3.

TwistraNet is written in PYTHON (> 2.4) It requires the Django Framework (as of writing, Django >= 1.2 is mandatory)

Other requirements:

• python-setuptools
• python-imaging (aka PIL)
• python-ldap, only if you want to authenticated against LDAP/Active Directory.

• Install requirements (Python, SetupTools and PIL)
• Download and untar (or unzip) twistranet from https://github.com/numericube/twistranet/tarball/master
• In the unzipped directory, just execute:
  • (sudo) python ./setup.py install clean

twistranet is now installed. You can have many sites with just one twistranet installation, so you need to explicitly deploy and bootstrap your new site.

• (sudo) twistranet_project <path_to_my_new_site>

Don't forget to write down your generated admin password!!

Your server should now be fully working and running on http://localhost:8000 !

If you want to start it again:

• cd <path_to_my_new_site>
• python ./manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

Installation is in fact a 2 steps process. You must install twistranet's core features as a python library, then you have to create a project (which is an instance of a twistranet site).

To install twistranet's core features:

• Download and install Python >= 2.4 (with setuptools)
• Download twistranet from github.com/numericube/twistranet
• Execute (as a superuser) ./setup.py install clean ; this will normally install all dependencies.

To create a new project:

• In the directory you want your website files created, type "python twistranet_project -n [<template>] <project_path>",

  where <project_path> is the name of your site (it will be created by the process) ; <template> is the name of the project template to deploy. Currently admitted values are:

  • 'default' (which is... the default value), an empty project based on sqlite;
  • 'cogip', a sample french-language project of a fictious company called COGIP.

The '-n' (or '--no-bootstrap') is an option to tell the twistranet_project script not to bootstrap it immediately (the bootstraping process is the initial database feed).

You can do it by hand once (and only once!) with the following commands:

• Go to your <project_path>

• Review the settings.py file and local_settings.py, change to whatever suits your needs.

  Among other things, carefully choose your DATABASE scheme, your LDAP/AD settings and the 'admin' password that has been generated for you.

• Execute "./manage.py bootstrap" to build the database

Running Twistranet :

• Execute ./manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0 to start playing with twistranet.
• Point your browser at http://localhost:8000

To start twistranet in DEBUG mode, just declare a TWISTRANET_DEBUG environment variable before starting "runserver".

You can run twistranet without installing it (but you still need to install its dependencies).

This is useful if you want to work with a development version without installing it.

For example, if you want to run twistranet from the 'my_project' directory inside the twistranet source directory, do the following:

• Download twistranet ;
• Go into the twistranet directory (there should be a ./twistranet_project.py file in there) ;
• Execute:
  • python ./twistranet_project.py my_project
  • cd my_project
  • ./manage.py bootstrap --pythonpath ../twistranet
  • ./manage.py runserver --pythonpath ../twistranet

That's it :)

This is probably a problem with python-imaging installation. Just install PIL for your OS.

Under debian, the easiest is to do "apt-get install python-imaging".

If you've got this message, that means the autoinstall procedure of twistranet can't install django automatically. Just install django (see www.django-project.org) either from sources or from a package from your OS, and run "python setup.py install" again.

Seems that it is a python-2.5 related problem.

It's easy to set a new one.

• Stop your server
• Run ./manage.py changepassword admin (and change your password)
• Start your server again

Email templates are inspired from MailChimp's Email-Blueprints (https://github.com/mailchimp/Email-Blueprints). We do love Mailchimp and strongly recommand it if you want a powerful mailing-list solution!