[TYPO3-linux] Virtual shared hosting and TYPO3: Companion programs

[Dimitri Tarassenko]

Matt,

On 3/16/06, Matt Stanley <superstan76 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I'm trying to get TYPO3 installed on my own testing server so I can learn
> it. Eventually I intend to use TYPO3 in a shared virtual hosting
> environment, however, for my business. As I'm getting deeper into the
> install process I'm realizing there are like six other, companion programs
> BESIDES TYPO3 that are necessary for it to work properly (GraphicsMagick,
> Ghostscript, Zlib, Libpng, FreeType, GDLib)... I'm wondering how that's
> supposed to work in such an environment, where users are not typically given
> shell access, and these other programs may not be installed.

Let's start with the statement that you only need those if you want to
use TYPO3's on-the-fly graphics creation - that is, graphical headers,
graphical menus, server-side image scaling, etc. TYPO3 will perfectly
work without them, it's just it will be somewhat limited in what you
can do.

Now, one by one:

GraphicsMagick: is used to scale, blend images, produce shadow under
graphical text objects and for niceText effect (which is basically
rendering text at x2 pitch, then bicubic downscaling it 50%). Possible
alternatives are ImageMagick (shipped with most of Linux distros).

GhostScript: is only needed if you want to rasterize PostScript-based
files. The only real life application of it that I can see is creating
a preview of a PDF file. Never used it - if it works out of the box on
a Linux I am putting TYPO3 on, fine - if it doesn't - not much lost.

zlib: the library itself is so basic no Linux ever shipped without one
in the default installation. PHP interface to zlib is enabled in 99%
of "stock" PHP builds which you get with your distro.

GDLib: GD is used by PHP to produce graphics. Again, most stock PHP
builds will either have it compiled in, or available as RPM/.deb. In
RedHat/FC it used to be built-in in 8.0-9.0, and is available as
php-gd RPM later on.

libPNG is a system library for manipulating PNG files. If you don't
plan on doing so, you don't need it. If you do, chances are it is
already installed in your distro / or will be installed as a
dependency when you install GD.

FreeType is a library to render TTF fonts. You only need it if you
plan to do graphical menus or graphical headers. Again, TYPO3 does not
use this library directly, it is only used through
PHP->php-gd->GDLib->FreeType. Again, most distros have it.

Now, as far as users without shell access are concerned - shell access
is not a requirement to use any of the above. Very few shared hosting
providers do not have all necessary PHP libraries installed, and you
can easily tell if all you need is there by looking at the phpinfo()
output.

Static builds of both GM and ImageMagick are available - you can just
upload them via FTP.

Just bear in mind that TYPO3's market is developers with
skills/experience somewhat higher than average. No, TYPO3 probably
won't run in a $3/month PHP hosting environment from goDaddy or Yahoo.
It will, however, run just fine in a $10-$15/month environment from,
say, 1and1 :).

--
Dimitri Tarassenko