General
Is Lighthouse Open Source?
Lighthouse is a commercial Content Management System for enterprise use, developed by Fidra. It is neither an Open Source effort nor is the source code generally available to customers.
If your business needs access to the source code, please contact us.
Which technology is Lighthouse based on?
Lighthouse is written in native C++ for best performance and stability on each platform it works on. It can be used with web servers via included thin interface layers.
For example, Lighthouse ships with such an interface layer as a module for Apache 2.0. To use Lighthouse, all you need to do is include this module in your Apache's server configuration.
Lighthouse does not require third party extensions and frameworks like PHP or J2EE, but can of course be used together with these.
What platforms is Lighthouse available on?
Lighthouse is currently available for Linux, Microsoft Windows, SUN Solaris and Mac OS X.
What databases can I use Lighthouse with?
Lighthouse can be used with MySQL, PostgreSQL or Oracle.
What web servers can I use Lighthouse with?
Lighthouse can be used as a module for Apache 1.3 (Linux only), Apache 2.0 (Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X) or Microsoft IIS (Windows only).
Can Lighthouse be used via CGI?
There's only experimental support for CGI at the moment. We do not recommend to use the Lighthouse CGI module in a production environment.
Installation
Do I need root privileges to install Lighthouse?
To install Lighthouse in a non-system directory, no root privileges are required. However, for production use your web server will probably have to bind to port 80, which is a privileged port. So your web server requires root privileges to start up.
If you are installing Lighthouse for evaluation or development purposes, you certainly do not need root privileges: Simply install to your home directory and use a port above 1024 for your web server.
Running Lighthouse
I want to run Lighthouse with an Apache 2.0 that uses the worker/perchild MPM. Is this possible?
It is possible, but we do not recommend it. There are issues with thread safety under Unix-based systems that are unfortunately beyond our control. Using Apache 2.0 with the prefork MPM is certainly the preferred choice.
Why doesn't Lighthouse work with Apache 1.3 on Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X?
The Apache module interface has significantly changed between Apache 1.3 and 2.0. Lighthouse supports Apache 1.3 on Linux because of customer demand.
At this time, we do not see such a demand for Windows, Solaris or Mac OS X, so Apache 2.0 is the only Apache httpd supported on these platforms.
Performance tuning
What are the advantages of Lighthouse's intelligent caching?
The multi-level caches Lighthouse uses allow for optimal performance and minimal load on the database. If you do not make use of the caches by turning them off in the lighthouse configuration file, Lighthouse and the database have to recalculate each and every response again and again for every request that comes in. The caches reduce the work Lighthouse and the database have to do for each response by a huge amount.