WebSubRev v0.52 (beta): Web-software for Conference Submission and Review

  Written by Shai Halevi <shaih@alum.mit.edu> from IBM Research
  Distributed under the Common Public License (CPL v1.0)
  See http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cpl1.0.php


Installing the software:
========================
One of the goals of this software was to make administration as easy as
possible. In particular, you never need to run scripts etc. In principle,
to install this software you just unpack it in some directory in your web
tree (call it the BASE directory), point your browser at that directory
and off you go.

Some caveats:
-------------
This software is currently a PHP/MySQL software, which means that to
use it you must have a MySQL server and a PHP engine (and your web-server
must supports PHP and MySQL). I tested the software with PHP 4.3.2 and
MySQL 3.23 (both quite old now), as well as PHP 5.0.4 and MySQL 4.1.12.
It may work with even older versions (but it may not). Also, the proper 
functioning of this software depend on "proper" functioning of you web-server.
In particular, two issues that I came across are:

* The scripts must be able to write and create sub-directories in the
  BASE directory. When using this software on Linux with an Apache
  server (running as user "apache"), I had to chdir to the BASE directory
  and make sure the directory and all the files in it are owned by user
  "apache".

* The web-server (and the PHP engine) must be willing to upload files.
  For example, in one system that I used to test it, the PHP engine was
  configured to only allow uploads of files upto 500KB (and I was wrecking
  my brains as to why I can only upload pdf and not postscript files..) In
  my case it turned out that I had to change the parameter LimitRequestBody
  in php.conf (which on that system was somewhere under /etc/httpd/).

Experimenting with the software:
--------------------------------
I wrote a small testing package for the purpose of experimenting with
the software. To use this package, you just need to unpack it in the
same BASE directory as the software package itself (*before* you
customize the installation). This testing package adds 53 dummy
submissions and 17 dummy PC members to the conference database.

Troubleshooting:
----------------
Most of the parameters of the software are stored in the file
"includes/confConstants.php" under the BASE directory. (This file is
generated by the customize page which is discussed below.) If you have
problems with the software, looking at this file may provide some hints
as to the source of the problem.


2. First-time customization:
============================
When you first point your browser to a virgin copy of the software, it
takes you to a "customization page" where you customize this copy for
your conference. In this page you specify things like the conference
name, the PC chair email address, whether or not submissions are anonymous,
and many other parameters. Nearly all the parameters that you specify in
this page can later by modified from the conference administration page.
Links are provided from this page to the documentation page, where you can
find some additional explanations about the role of different parameters.

