Hosted at SourceForge.
NOTE: PRES is very much end-of-life. It is old software, and I would not advise starting a new installation. If you're actually using it for something and need support, I can and will support it.
PRES (the Press Release System) is a simple content management system, essentially targeted at producing a news and information site. Managing a PRES system is designed to be simple. However, presentation is sophisticated and flexible. An elementary knowledge of IT would be useful but expertise in designing and managing websites is not a requirement. PRES can be used for anything from private 'blogging' to corporate news systems.
There are Several PRES installations on corporate Intranets. PRES systems which are on the public Internet include
If you would like your PRES system listed in this section please write to me.
PRES is delivered as a Java WebApp - that is, a collection of Java, XML and HTML resources intended to be served from inside a Servlet 2.3 specification Servlet Container, such as Tomcat 5 (indeed, although PRES should work with any compliant servlet container, the ones we test against and recommend are Tomcat versions 4 or 5).
It needs to have access to a relational database engine, and the only one which is really supported is Postgres 7. We know people who use PRES with MS SQL Server and with Oracle, and we're sure many other databases are possible; but we use, support and recommend Postgres.
For automatic thumbnailing of images to work on UN*X-like platforms, you should use a Java Development Kit later than 1.4.2 and the script which starts the Servlet container should pass the parameters
-Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx128M -server
to the Java Virtual Machine (you will probably find this is the default). If you cannot do this, automatic thumbnails of uploaded pictures will
not work.
PRES is Free Software and is licensed to you under the General Public License. If you download the binary distribution from us using the instructions below, you will also receive the following components upon which PRES depends:
| File | Contents | Produced by | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| activation.jar | Java Activation Framework | Sun Microsystems | Sun Microsystems, Inc. Binary Code License Agreement |
| crimson.jar | Apche Crimson XML Parser | Apache Software Foundation | Apache License |
| jacquard.jar | Jacquard Toolkit | Web Engineering Factory and Toolworks | BSD |
| jtds.jar | jTDS (MS SQL Server JDBC Driver) | CDS Networks | LGPL |
| mail.jar | Java Mail | Sun Microsystems | Sun Microsystems, Inc. Binary Code License Agreement |
| postgresql.jar | Postgres JDBC Driver | PostgreSQL Global Development Group | BSD |
| regexp.jar | Regular Expression parser | The Apache Foundtion | Apache |
| saxon.jar | SAXON XSLT Processor | Michael Kay | Mozilla |
You can download source distribution bundles of PRES from here. As of version 1.7 PRES is now developed with eclipse and built with ant. To build the source, untar the distribution, connect to the distribution directory,.and just run
ant installer
This will build the installer which should be identical to the one you can download from SourceForge
I would welcome active collaborators in developing PRES further. If you'd like to join in, the project page is here.
These instructions assume you're running Tomcat version 5 and Postgres version 7. If you're running a different servlet container and/or database engine, you may find things are slightly more complex, but you should be able to work it out.
To install PRES, you should first set up your database by typing
createdb databasename
at the command line on the machine on which you're running Postgres, where databasename is the name you choose for the database.
Then download the installer from here; then run the installer, either by selecting its icon or by running
java -jar pres-1.8.minor-version-installer.jar
and answering all the questions.
If you request the installer to initialise the database it will set up the appropriate tables and data. If you encounter a problem go on to What to do if the database install script fails, below. Once the database installation is completed (again, it may take a few seconds) you should be able to try
http://your.host.name:8080/pres/
Your PRES system is now installed, and you should go to
http://your.host.name:8080/pres/admin
to administer it (use the Editor's username and password that you typed into our form). As a final test that everything's OK, go to
http://your.host.name:8080/pres/articles
You will find we've already set one article up for you. Select Edit This! and you will see a form headed Add or Edit a Story. Scroll to the bottom of the form and you will find a heading Pictures illustrating this article, below which you will find a link Add a new PICTURE. Select this link, and you will see a form Add or Edit a Picture. Actually if you can see the form at all that confirms that the installation has completed OK, but for your own satisfaction find a picture on your local machine to upload to PRES. If you can't see the form go to What to do if the WAR didn't unpack, below.
That's it! You're up and running. Enjoy!
You must create a database to hold PRES' data. It does not matter what this database is called, but it must be accessible via JDBC. This discussion assumes you will use Postgres. You don't have to use Postgres; in principle PRES should work with any database engine which supports views and transactions and which is accessible via JDBC. It is fairly easy to get PRES working with Oracle, somewhat less easy with MS SQL Server. With other databases you're on your own.
Firstly, you must ensure that Postgres is listening on a port, usually 5432. The simplest way to do this is to run the postmaster with the -i flag (see the postmaster man page). However, many packaged postgres installations nowadays have configuration files to control this sort of thing so you should check the configuration files of your particular installation. You must also allow your database to be connected to from the machine which runs the servlet container. Note that the database engine does not need to be running on the same server as the servlet container, but bear in mind that JDBC connections pass passwords over unencrypted network connections so if they are not on the same machine you need to be confident that the network between them cannot be snooped. To allow connections over the network, you need to edit the pg_hba.conf configuration file of your postgres installation, to add a line like:
host pres 192.168.4.72 255.255.255.248 password
where
So this example would allow the subnet consisting of the six machines from 192.168.1.73 to 192.168.1.78 to connect. To test that you have configured this correctly, first run
createdb pres
on the machine on which postgres is running to create the database. Then, from the machine which runs your servlet engine, run
psql -h database.machine.address -i 5432 pres
where
If this call succeeds and you get the database prompt your database is set up correctly. If it isn't, sort it out before going on to the next stage.
We do not ship Oracle JDBC drivers with PRES for copyright reasons. To install them, after the war file has been unpacked, drop the Oracle JDBC driver archive file which came with your Oracle installation into pres/WEB-INF/lib, where pres is the name you gave the PRES web application. You will not be able to run the firsttime servlet until you have done this and restarted the web application.
The database install script, called when you run the firsttime servlet, can fail. It will fail if
Don't panic, this is not a disaster. The script which the database is setup from will be found in the unpacked war file.
in each case where pres is the name you gave to the PRES web application. Using either the database engine's interactive command line tool (e.g. psql, Query Analyser, sqldba) or use a JDBC tool such as SQL Workbench/J, copy and paste individual SQL statements from the database script in turn and run them against the database. Note where one fails and fix the problem before going on to the next.
In order to maintain its cache and to store uploaded pictures and templates, PRES needs the servlet container in which it is run to unpack the WAR file. The servlet specification doesn't require this - it's optional. Tomcat 5.0.24 does unpack war files by default, but some versions of Tomcat 4 don't, and the copy you have may have been configured differently in any case.
The simplest thing to do if you have this problem (the symptom is you can't get the picture or template servlet to work), is to unpack the war file by hand. Go to the directory into which the war file has been put, and create a new subdirectory with the same base name as the war file (i.e., if the war file is called pres.war the directory should be called pres). Unpack the contents of the war file into that directory using either the jar utility, or any zip unpacking tool such as winzip or ark. If you do this you should ensure that the directory you created and all of its contents are owned by the user which your servlet engine runs as.
If you want to configure Tomcat, either version 4 or version 5, to automatically unpack war files, you can edit the server.xml configuration file, and find the host element for the virtual host your PRES system will run in. you must set its unpackWARs attribute to true.
<!-- Define the default virtual host -->
<Host name="your.server.name" debug="0"
appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true">
If you are in doubt which virtual host is appropriate, there should be no harm in setting unpackWARs to true for all of them. If you are not the administrator of your Tomcat installation you may have to ask the system administrator to do this.
Alternatively, in later versions of Tomcat 4 and in Tomcat 5, you can use the Tomcat Web Server Administration Tool. In the tool, click on the host icon for the appropriate host entry in the tree view (unless you are doing something quite complex, there will only be one host entry). Set 'Unpack Wars' to 'True' and click 'Save'. Then click 'Commit Changes'.
If you don't run Tomcat, of course, you must configure the servlet container you do run to unpack war files. I don't know of any servlet containers which won't allow you to unpack war files. If you have one then at present you can't run PRES.
If you need support getting PRES running please feel free to contact me.
If you find bugs in PRES, or have suggestions for improvements or new features, you can use this form
Copyright © 2004 Simon Brooke
Now hosted at SourceForge.