Davide Moro: How to install Kotti CMS on Windows

Yes, as expected, you can install Kotti CMS also on Windows if you have this constraint!

What is Kotti

From the official doc:

"""A high-level, Pythonic web application framework based on Pyramid and SQLAlchemy. It includes an extensible Content Management System called the Kotti CMS.

Kotti is most useful when you are developing applications that:

have complex security requirements
use workflows, and/or
work with hierarchical data

"""

It is developer friendly and with a good user interface. You can easily extend it, develop new features or install one of the available third party modules (search for Kotti on https://pypi.python.org/pypi if you want to browse existing modules ready to be used). Heavily inspired by Plone (http://plone.org).

If you want to evaluate Kotti you can install it locally (no database installation is required, you can use SQLlite during evaluation or development).

Otherwise if you are particular lazy there is a working demo online with admin / qwerty administrator credentials:

http://kottidemo.danielnouri.org

Prerequisites

python (tested with python 2.7.9 but it should work also on newer versions)
Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0 available on the following url http://aka.ms/vcpython27 (needed for an issue with bcrypt)
virtualenv (suggested)

Installation steps

Once you have installed python from http://www.python.org you can start installing Kotti. I assume in this article that your Python installation path is C:\Python27.

Now create a new folder (it doesn't matter the name, in this article my folder name is just kotti):

> mkdir kotti
> cd kotti

Install virtualenv and create a new isolated python environment in your kotti dir:

> C:\Python27\Scripts\pip.exe install virtualenv> C:\Python27\Scripts\virtualenv.exe --no-site-packages .

Install Kotti and its requirements:

> Scripts\pip.exe install -r https://raw.github.com/Kotti/Kotti/stable/requirements.txt
> Scripts\pip.exe install Kotti

Put inside your kotti dir the app.ini file downloaded from:

https://raw.github.com/Kotti/Kotti/stable/app.ini

Runs Kotti:

Scripts\pserve.exe app.ini
Starting server in PID 2452
serving on http://127.0.0.1:5000

Done!

Update 20150219: if you want to install Kotti as a standard Windows service see this tutorial: http://pyramid-cookbook.readthedocs.org/en/latest/deployment/windows.html.

Troubleshooting (tested on Windows Vista)

If Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler for Python 2.7 is not installed on your environment you'll get an error during the requirements installation phase (only on Windows):

> Scripts\pip.exe install -r https://raw.githubusercontent.co
m/Kotti/Kotti/stable/requirements.txt
....
Running setup.py install for py-bcrypt
    building 'bcrypt._bcrypt' extension
    error: Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0 is required (Unable to find vcvarsall.bat).
Get it from http://aka.ms/vcpython27
    Complete output from command C:\Users\dmoro\kotti\Scripts\python.exe -c "imp
ort setuptools, tokenize;__file__='c:\\users\\dmoro\\appdata\\local\\temp\\pip-b
uild-mact2r\\py-bcrypt\\setup.py';exec(compile(getattr(tokenize, 'open', open)(_
_file__).read().replace('\r\n', '\n'), __file__, 'exec'))" install --record c:\u
sers\dmoro\appdata\local\temp\pip-wcmy6c-record\install-record.txt --single-vers
ion-externally-managed --compile --install-headers C:\Users\dmoro\kotti\include\
site\python2.7:
    running install

    running build

    running build_py

    creating build

    creating build\lib.win-amd64-2.7

    creating build\lib.win-amd64-2.7\bcrypt

    copying bcrypt\__init__.py -> build\lib.win-amd64-2.7\bcrypt

    running build_ext

    building 'bcrypt._bcrypt' extension

    error: Microsoft Visual C++ 9.0 is required (Unable to find vcvarsall.bat).
Get it from http://aka.ms/vcpython27

You just need to install this requirement and all will work fine.

Troubleshooting 2 (tested on Windows 2008 R2 Server - updated 20150219)

You might experience other compilation errors on Windows due to different compiler versions, role management tool configuration, missing DLLs, environment variables (vcvars32.bat), missing header files, etc. The same C code that compiles fine on a Windows machine, on a different version of Windows could produce a compilation error (compiling under Windows is a pain).

Anyway the following links helped me a lot a install py-bcrypt under Windows 2008 R2 Server with Visual Studio 2008 Express (free version downloadable from http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7729279):

Screenshots

Kotti's front page (from the public demo online):

Kotti's folder contents (from the public demo online), requires authentication:

All posts about Kotti

All Kotti posts published by @davidemoro:

http://davidemoro.blogspot.it/search/label/kotti

Davide Moro

2015-01-19

How to install Kotti CMS on Windows