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Voila Installation
- Creating multiple instances of Voila on one server
Installation of Voila
- Before you run the setup.php file
- Mysql access
- Configuration of Voila
- The Create a new lesson
Uploading media
- The Generate function of a finalized lesson
- Additional Optional Installation
Attachment: Voila Technical Requirements
Voila Installation:
-This is the document that describes how to install Voila.
Creating multiple instances of Voila on one server:
Yes it is possible to have more than one instance of Voila on your server. The setup is more complex. Follow these steps, before you run the setup.php file.
In the voila/ folder is a file called instance.php which contains a global variable named $instance = ‘voila’; . This variable is the key to trigger the right database instance in voila_db.inc. Therefore you will need to modify the voila_db.inc file to distinguish between your instances and set the new instance variable to differentiate from your previous one. Please view the screenshot here of 2 instances on same server.
Installation of Voila:
Before you begin the installation of Voila make sure you meet the technical requirement.
It is recommended that you are the administrative user of your web server and that you have some familiarity with php and mysql before you continue.
The Voila tar ball contains 2 folders, voila_html/ and voila_php/.
Move the voila_html directory to your public html directory. You may want to rename the directory to “voila”. (e.g. /var/www/html/voila_html).
Create a php include directory, e.g. /var/www/php/include if you do not already have one that is not publicly visible on your web server.
Move the files in the voila_php folder to your php/include directory.
Edit your php.ini file, e.g. /etc/php.ini to include your include directory if it’s not already there e.g. include_path = “.:/usr/share/pear:/var/www/php/include”
Notice: Voila uses some of the pear.php.net files. You may need to modify the exact location of the pear.php file in the: IT.php, Zip.php, Parser.php or you can add the location of your pear files to your include_path.
Before you run the setup.php file:
Change permission on the file so that the user that your web server runs as owns them e.g. chown –R apache voila_html; chown –R apache voila_php.
Decide whether you want to create the MySQL database yourself or if you want the voila setup.php file to do it for you. If you create the database yourself, please see MySQL access below.
If you would like the setup program to create the database, you will need a mysql username and password that has privileges to create a new database.
Run the setup.php file from your browser by going to
The script will check and verify that you have all the required files and that the files are accessible.
Notice: During setup.php you should pay attention to any Warning or Failure php may display and fix them as they are revealed. After you fix an error, reload the page to continue the setup process.
Successful preparation of Voila setup.php should look like the screens below:
Instance.php file creation:
When you run the setup you should see the “Create Instance File” link as shown below.
The instance.php file doesn’t exist and have to be created.
After creation of the file you get a respond like above.
You will now need to refresh the screen to continue setup.
The file is successfully placed and read. You can now move to the next step in the setup process.
Notice that other errors below which were related, has been resolved.
You will need to refresh the screen to continue setup.
Mysql access:
You can choose to create the mysql access file yourself or let the setup.php file do it.
When you run the setup.php file you will be ask to enter the DB connection and the setup file will create a new voila_db.inc file.
Create the MySQL database as you normally do. (see MySQL documentation for instructions.) The database name must be “voila” or match the file instance.php variable.
Then enter the Mysql information (host, user, password, database) in the “voila_db.inc” section of the setup.php page.
Enter the username and password for MySQL.
After creation you will need to refresh the screen to continue setup.
When you run the setup.php please make sure it has run to completion and that you have access to the database. You should see a list of tables like below.
The setup will generate some simple XML files and place them in XML/files/.
The script should verify that these files have been created or exist.
After this your Voila setup has completed.
Please view the screenshot here of a complete successful setup.
You can now enter the voila/login.php page.
The default admin login is username: ‘voila’, password: ‘voila’.
Note: If that doesn’t work you may need to modify the voila.PERSON table in the MySQL database. Once logged into the database type:
Update voila.PERSON set email = ‘$your_email_address’ where ID=’1’;
You will then be able to use Voila’s “I forgot my password” feature to have the admin password sent to you.
Once you’ve logged into Voila, be sure to update the rest of your settings.
Good luck using voila and please let us know what you think of the system.
Configuring Voila:
Log into Voila as an administrator.
Go to your Workspace under Tools and click ‘Configure Voila Settings’.
Use this screen to change the name of the main administrator of your system and change some basic layout options of the site, such as the sidebar color and logo.
After you make your changes, you will need to log out and log in to see them.
How to Generate a Final Lesson:
Make sure that you have each of the following folders in the lessons/ folder:
packet/
preview/
publish/
remote/
You can verify that each of these folders has a subfolder labeled with the lessonid of the lesson you’re trying to finalize.
Description of the folders:
Preview/ Contain the preview files of the lesson.
Publish/ (Similar to Preview), but contain the Completed version of the lesson and the version that is viewable to the public from the lessons_by_topic.html pages. (You can see this link at the top of a lesson page.
Packet/ Contain a zip file of the lesson. All the created lesson pages as you see on the preview and publish pages will be placed in this file. Users can take and use this for backup, personal use, presentations etc.
Remote/ (Similar to Packet), but contain the remote files that can be copied to a remote server by the user.
Additional Optional Installation:
Voila was originally built to only support Quicktime movies and used the following program to get the header information for the .mov files.
OpenQuicktime (
To copy a lesson to a remote server the following Perl package is needed.
HTTP::DAV;