I-Man is a web application written in PHP which serves as knowledge, general information or contact database. It aims to be easy to use and tries not to confuse it's users with too many options or parameters. Records are simple text, and all kinds of files can be attached to them as well.
New feature in version 1.0: Optional user authentication (featuring fine-grained user rights) has been implemented! Apart of that, an important security-fix regarding file-uploads (attachments) has been made, all exisiting installations should be upgraded to version 1.0.
Roughly, I-Man works like this:
On top of the main screen you can see and select the titles of the records that are saved in the database.
When you choose a particular title in the list, the lower frame of the screen moves to the selected record.
The icons aside the shown record give access to different options depending of the users rights (or the configured
autologin permissions).
Records can be categorized, there is a
category-editor, a
Settings page, a
History page, and you can
search the content. Optionally,
users can be notified by mail whenever records are
added,
changed or
deleted.
| Main Window | Add a Record | Category Editor | Settings | User Editor | Add new user |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
I-Man is released under the GNU General Public License.
To run I-Man you need the following installed on your system:
To install it, extract the downloaded archive somewhere in your webserver directory tree, it will create a directory called i-man-1.0. If you have SQLite support in your PHP setup, it should run out-of-the-box as its configured to use a shipped ready-to-go SQLite database. However, you may want to edit the file config.php since that's where (among other settings) the following things can be set:
After having chosen the database, open also it's respective file in the /db/ subdirectory, and set your username/password and the database location (At the beginning of each file). In case of SQLite, you must assure that the useraccount the webserver runs under has write-permissions to the SQLite database file (as to the directory that holds the file!). The same is true for the directory the attachments will be stored in.
You can find scripts to create empty databases in the /exampledb/ directory. For SQLite a ready-to-go database is included. For other DBMSs, creating the database using the shipped scripts is the recommended way.
The language files are located in the subdirectory /i18n/. If you need to create another language, just save English.php (or whatever.php) under the name of your language, open it and translate its texts. The new language will be available in the settings page as soon as the file exists in the /i18n/ subdirectory. The same is true for styles, you just need to create a new stylesheet in the /styles/ directory. If you send me your translation or style, it will be included in the subsequent release.
In the exampledb directory you will find scripts to create a database for all the supported backends. As mentioned above, for SQLite there is also a ready-to-use example-db, which I-Man uses by default.
The database schema was cleaned up and sanitized with version 0.9, you cannot use a pre-0.9 database with this version. If you need you convert an older database to the 0.9 schema, you can either write a conversion script ;-) or contact me and I will do it.
Version 1.0 adds one table (iman_users, containing the users) to the database. In case you don't need authentication, you will neither need that table... That means you can use a version 0.9 database with version 1.0 without any problem. If, as database version 0.9 user, you want to upgrade to 1.0 and use the authentication features, just take a look at the script provided in the /exampledb/ directory, find the SQL for creating the iman_users table for your DBMS, add it, and you're done. By the way, default user and password is admin/admin.
There is also a mailing list. Interested users and potential new developers are invited to join it by visiting this page: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/i-man-devel
© 2001-2006 by Yves Glodt
