5.3. Installing Plugins

When you're installing a plugin, refer to its documentation. The documentation could be in a README file, but more commonly it's in the plugin code itself at the top of the file. This documentation should tell you how to install the plugin, what template variables the plugin exposes, how to invoke the plugin, how to get in touch with the author should you find bugs or need help, and any additional things you should know about.

Most plugins should have a pretty easy installation method. You should be able to copy the plugin into the directory defined in your config.py file in the plugin_dirs property. Then there might be some additional properties you'll have to set in your config.py file to define the plugin's behavior. That should be about it. On some occasions, you may have to change the code in the plugin itself to meet your specific needs.

	Apache, no suexec, .pyc files, and problems
	If you're not running suexec, then Apache may not be able to generate the .pyc files for your plugins. This may result in your plugins failing to load. If that happens, you can run ./pyblosxom.cgi in your shell and generate the .pyc files yourself. Every time you install a new plugin or change an existing plugin, you'll need to remove the .pyc files and re-generate them.