CommunityAuth

Perhaps you can make a zip of your entire website files, and include a database dump, then make it available for download so I can check it out.

Maybe I can try to do that later, but I'd like to learn what I'm doing wrong.   I've read your instructions many times and curious about 4, 5, 6 & 11.

You use the word "Copy" which means;
4. having a file remaining in community_auth/core AND another new file in CodeIgniter’s application/core directory, 2 files in total.
5. having a file remaining in community_auth/hooks AND another new file in CodeIgniter’s application/hooks directory, 2 files in total.
6. having a file remaining in community_auth/controllers AND another new file in CodeIgniter’s application/controllers directory, 2 files in total.

or do you mean "Cut" or "Transfer" and having only the new files in the CodeIgniter's directories, 1 file in each directory?   I have tried deleting the community_auth files but it makes no difference.

Another area where I suspect maybe causing the error is the failure to set the encryption key.   11. Enable hooks and "make sure there is an encryption key set" in config/config.php.   I enabled the hooks but I'm confused about setting the encryption key.

Undoubtedly I'll need to learn how to encrypt data at a later stage in the development process.

I've read "Setting your encryption_key" in the user_guide\libraries\encryption.html and wonder why an encryption key can not be set at a later stage of development, and be left blank in the meantime.

Or can I just enter any 16 characters into $config['encryption_key'] = ''; for the meantime?

Actually, step 4 is telling you to copy 3 files. You could copy or cut and paste, it doesn't matter.

Your understanding of step 5 is correct, but you could copy or cut and paste, and it would not matter.

Step 6 should only require that you copy (or cut and paste) the Examples.php controller.

The encryption key should normally be set as a random 32 character string. For a good random string, you might try the password generator over at grc.com: https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

The encryption key is necessary for encryption of the session. If you read the documentation for sessions, you'll see that this is a requirement.

16 characters for an encryption key will work. CodeIgniter "fixes" this for you.

OK, I got 32 random characters from https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm and entered them into $config['encryption_key'] = ''; BUT I still get the same error;

Service unavailable!
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster.

Error 503
localhost
Apache/2.4.12 (Win32) OpenSSL/1.0.1l PHP/5.6.8

The userguide does say that the key must not be the output of a hashing function, etc and I wonder if the 32 random characters I got from https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm were just that.

However I'll go back and test the "Create news items" from the CodeIgniter Tutorial, and maybe reload CodeIgniter and or CommunityAuth again to see if that solves my problem.

Do you have a package, including CodeIgniter 3.0.0 together with your latest version of CommunityAuth?

But more importantly, I'd like to understand more about encryption.   I understand the need for data to be encrypted and the secrecy involving access to the data when a website is open to the public, but I don't understand why it is necessary during development of the website.

And when the website is open to the public and if there was an attack on the website, I guess the attacker would also get access to the config file via the inner workings of the servers computer, and then get access to the encryption key.   Is there anything to stop that?

Maybe other members could answer that.

Update 28/08/2015

I tested the "Create news items" and it worked OK.   I replaced CommunityAuth with another copy and this URL http://localhost/examples/create_user but it made no difference.   I then tried this URL - http://localhost/index.php/examples/create_user

And got this result;

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: mt_rand(): max(-1) is smaller than min(1200)

Filename: controllers/Examples.php

Line Number: 433

Backtrace:

File: C:\xampp\htdocs\application\controllers\Examples.php

Line: 433

Function: mt_rand

File: C:\xampp\htdocs\application\controllers\Examples.php

Line: 183

Function: _get_unused_id

File: C:\xampp\htdocs\index.php

Line: 292

Function: require_once

Congratulations

User christaliise was created.

*********************************
skunkbad, do you know how to clear that error?

I now need to learn how to remove the index.php file by mod_rewrite.

This might be the solution for the problem:
https://www.drupal.org/node/1066694

Citation:

The cause of this is the Tomcat configuration in XAMPP.
Go to
C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-ajp.conf
and comment out the line:
ProxyPass /examples ajp://127.0.0.1:8009/examples smax=0 ttl=60 retry=5