Hello, SimpleInovices looks very attractive but I am a rank beginner when it comes to working with PHP, WAMP, Webservers, databaseservers, and the like. I have thus been unable to install the application because I can't follow the directions either for WAMP or for SimpleInvoice. This is extremely frustrating. Is there any set of instructions in real layman's terms to help with these two installations? E.g. "Extract.....to a simpleinvoices folder in your web server's document root" =?? Many thanks.Paul
i understand your frustration - before i started doing php i had no idea about servers etc..
if your on windows the easiest option is to install WAMP http://www.wampserver.com/en which takes care of all the server stuff - document root is where the webserver looks for the the html/php/etc.. files that make up the requested web page/app
if you install WAMP on your PC if will makes root document directory something like C:\WAMP\www - this means when you open up your browser and go to htt://localhost the webserver servers up whatever files are in the document root ( C:\WAMP\www ) - basically this means that http://localhost = C:\WAMP\www (or similar) - <b>This is the document root</b>
so we want the url to be http://localhost/simpleinvoices - we unzip the Simple Invoices file you downloaded and copy the folder (simpleinvoices) to the document root (C:\WAMP\www ) -- so you'll now have a folder called C:\WAMP\www\simpleinvoices
the next step is to create the database - once WAMP is installed you open up the browser and go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin - you need to create a new database - then import the SimpleInvoices.sql file into that database
hope this gets you started - ask any questions you need to
i'll try and make the documentation the user friendly
Thanks, Justin. As luck would have it, my neighborhood tech wiz speaks this php/server language fluently and was able to help me install with no problem. I have two new questions: 1) How to I delete Customers and Invoices so I can start with a clean slate? By enabling Delete in system preferences, I got access to that feature for some of the existing invoices, but others produce and error message saying s.t. like "can't delete, has $xx billed against it". 2) I can't get the Reporting function to work; is this not up yet? If you have a way to accept contributions (my ignorance of 'community programs'), I'd be happy to make one if I decide to adopt this program on a permanent basis. Regards, Paul
glad to hear your neighbour could lend a hand - i wish it was simpler to get it up and running
re 1. - yep - unfortunately some stuff in Simple Invoices can't be deleted via the program just yet -- what i normally do it just edit the customer etc.. and select disable -- if you want to delete all the payments, invoices, etc,, you currently have to open up phpMyAdmin and manually delete the data --- ie. go into the database, select the simple invoices database, find the customers table and delete all the rows you don't need -- not the best solution but the only 1 we've got till the installer is ready
re 2. - for reporting your PHP installation required xsl to be enabled -- if your using WAMP as the PHP installer it should be OK - but you might have to get your neighbour to have another look at that one -- just have a search on the forum there are lots of other people who have had this issue and got it working
re contributions - the best things you can do are: - 1 use Simple Invoices - 2 tell other people about Simple Invoices - 3 help out on the forum etc.. where possible
- i used to have a paypal donation thing but have found the above 3 items are much better for Simple Invoices
