Symphony.

Just putting the folder in causes a blank page (Safari) or 500 error (Chrome). Fresh 2.2.1 installation.

So far these extensions have caused problems:

iwyg-resizeupload nilshoerrmann-subsectionmanager nilshoerrmann-imageindexpreview vlad-ghita-pagelhandles knupska-staticsection kanduvisla-authorroles kanduvisla-authorsection nickdunn-order_entries ... and more

The only extension that has worked so far is "sitename"

Ok, I tried like 20 extensions, and they all cause this problem, except for "sitename"...

Have you made sure the extension's folder has the correct name? You probably have, but it's the first thing to check.

Can you switch on PHP error reporting and post any output?

Oops You are right!!! I forgot to strip the authors from all the folders.

I don't remember doing this for any past sites, but I must have b/c I checked all my servers and noticed they don't have author names in the folder name...

It would be helpful if someone wrote an Automator action or similar to automate this process.

Edit: Ok, the real problem is not the name of the folder, but that folders cannot have - in the name. This is a problem with the extension 'Backend Language Switcher' which is named 'backend-language-switcher' instead of 'backendlanguageswitcher'.

It happens, don't worry about it!

This is something that could be added to the documentation for Extensions, on this site and in the extension README file:

Upload the extension folder to your Symphony 'extensions' folder with the extension directory name: 'extension_name'. If you have problems installing the extension, ensure that the directory name matches the extension.driver.php class name. If the extension driver class is extension_my_extension_name or Extension_My_Extension_Name, the directory name will be my_extension_name.

It might also be helpful to add instructions for cloning an extension or including an extension as a submodule, especially if the repository name is different than the name of the extension directory.

Install Extension with Git

Install the extension with Git by cloning the repository or adding the extension as a submodule. Navigate to the root of your Symphony install and run one of the following commands:

git clone --branch extension git://github.com/username/MyOddlyNamedExtensionRepository.git extensions/my_extension_name

or

git submodule add --branch extension git://github.com/username/MyOddlyNamedExtensionRepository.git extensions/my_extension_name

For example, the XPathr project is currently being developed as a single GitHub repository with separate branches for the Symphony core, the workspace and the extension.

There are a number of ways to correctly install extensions. One method is to use a single command to install the Symphony core and recursively initialize and clone all related submodules:

git clone --recursive git://github.com/symphonycms/symphony-2.git directory_name

Or if you are in the root directory of a server, you can specify the current directory for the install:

git clone --recursive git://github.com/symphonycms/symphony-2.git .

For the deprecated version of the XPathr ensemble, the entire project can be cloned into a new directory called ninja with a single command:

git clone --branch ninja-ensemble --recursive git://github.com/bauhouse/xpathr.git ninja

The XPath Ninja extension would be installed by navigating to the root of the Symphony install and running the following command:

git clone --branch extension git://github.com/bauhouse/xpathr.git extensions/ninja

For us old-timers, we have learned this from trial and error, but it would definitely be better to have this information explicitly included in the extension installation documentation.

That's very useful to know, bauhaus; I've added it to my little Symphony CMS wiki page (just starting). Thanks.

Ok, the real problem is not the name of the folder, but that folders cannot have - in the name.

Are you really sure about that? If this is true, something changes in on of the 2.x release because 2.0 allowed the usage of dashes as long as the developer made sure that folder and class names matched.

Well you can't name a class like Extension_My-Extension in PHP, so there's no reason why the folder should have a dash in it.

As far as I'm concerned, this is an education thing. Symphony 2 requires strict extension naming, this needs to be shouted from the rooftops so all extension developers name their repositories appropriately for those cloning with git. It also needs to be put into tutorials/installation guide so that people who use zip understand what they have to do once they download an extension. The latter is #680.

Symphony 3 resolves this issue by the extension driver returning the extension name at the end of the class, so the extension can be loaded regardless of the folder structure. Whether this can be added to the Symphony 2 branch whilst maintaining backwards compatibility, I don't know. The problem, education, would still exist though as developers still need to be aware that they must return the extension name in their driver, so although it's more flexible, it's only flexible if it's implemented by developers.

If you're doing a git clone of an extension, shouldn't you be doing it from the root, and therefore declaring the path of the extension? That's how I do it anyway.

I didn't think you could run git submodule from a subfolder...