Before You Start

Here are the officially published prerequisites, along with some of my findings made while trying to install and use FLIR for COIN 65:

  • PHP: Version 4 of PHP is suggested although in discussion forums, it is strongly recommended by the developer and other users that you upgrade to PHP 5. It's important to note that PHP's safe mode should be disabled, or else FLIR won't generate images at all. Click here to see test results showing whether the PHP is even able to generate images. Note the "NULL" is actually an image representing the word.
  • GD Library: Is a open source library for the dynamic creation of images. To use FLIR, you need to also have GD Library installed in a web directory accessible by the FLIR PHP scripts. The FLIR documentation doesn't describe where the library need to be relative to your FLIR resources, but placing it in a paralell directory worked fine. Notably, I didn't have to change any parameters or paths in any FLIR files to accomodate GD either.
  • Facelift Image Replacement The doadlad includes scripts plus sample fonts used in this image replacement technique.
  • Licensed Fonts: The plain vanilla package that you download and extract to your web directory contains a few sample fonts that are used to replace text. Note that these fonts are not available for commercial use, but you can include your own typefaces to the libraries which you have licensed or find freeware fonts on the web and use those.

Installing Facelift

Here's how I installed and got started with FLIR:

  1. Download the latest version of Facelift image replacement. At the time of this writing, the latest is version 1.2. Upload the .zip file to your web server then unzip it into a new folder. In this example, I put it in a new directory named “lib/facelift.”
  2. Download GD Library, upload the archive to your web directory and unzip it into a second, new folder. The image below shows how I had set up the particular directories under the lib folder. directory structure
  3. Test to insure that PHP is operating; in a web browser open the generate.php file in the folder containing your FLIR files. The word “null” should appear as an image. This tells you the PHP from FLIR is working. directory structure