LANager

LANager is a web application designed to make LAN Parties more enjoyable for attendees and organisers alike.

Features

Encourage Socialising & Participation

• Games being played - by your LAN's attendees, updated every minute from Steam
• Events timetable - so your attendees know what's on at the LAN
• Achievements - created and awarded to attendees by you
• Attendee profiles - with a link to their Steam profile, and their gameplay history at the LAN
• Games in common - when viewing another attendee's profile
• Games recently played - showing the top games most recently played by attendees at the LAN

Broadcast Useful Information

• Live Dashboard - showing games being played by attendees, current and upcoming events, for TVs/projectors around your venue
• Guides - written by you, to help attendees learn about, e.g. venue facilities, rules or gameplay guides
• Links - to other websites, e.g. your organisation's website, or a game statistics page

Requirements

• Server running Ubuntu Server 18.04 (with shell access - basic web hosting is not supported)
• Steam API Key
• Google API Key enabled for the Maps Embed API
• Internet access

While it's possible to run LANager on a server at your venue, only accessible internally, we recommend you cloud host, so outside of your events you can easily update the site and prepare for your next LAN, and your attendees can find out about it ahead of the event.

Installation

1. Install required packages:

   sudo add-apt-repository universe
   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install php7.2-common php7.2-fpm php7.2-mysql php7.2-mbstring php7.2-bcmath php7.2-xml php7.2-zip
   sudo apt install zip composer mysql-server nginx

2. Create a Nginx site configuration:

   sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/lanager

   server {
           listen 80;
   
           root /var/www/lanager/public;
   
           index index.html index.htm index.php;
   
           # Change to your domain:
           server_name lanager.example.com;
   
           location / {
               try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
           }
   
           location ~ \.php$ {
                   include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
   
                   fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
           }
           client_max_body_size 20M;
   }
   

3. Increase PHP's upload file size limit

   sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini

   Find and update the lines:

   upload_max_filesize = 20M
   post_max_size = 8M
   

   Restart PHP

   sudo systemctl restart php7.2-fpm

4. Enable the site:

   rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
   ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/lanager /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/lanager
   nginx -s reload

5. Configure MySQL:

   mysql

   CREATE DATABASE lanager;
   CREATE USER 'lanager'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'YOUR-PASSWORD-HERE';
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON lanager.* TO 'lanager'@'%';
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
   QUIT;
   

6. Clone a copy of LANager:

   git clone https://github.com/zeropingheroes/lanager /var/www/lanager/
   

7. Grant permissions:

   chgrp www-data -R /var/www/lanager/
   chmod 777 -R /var/www/lanager/storage
   

8. Install LANager's dependencies:

   composer install --working-dir=/var/www/lanager
   

9. Configure LANager:

   cd /var/www/lanager/ && cp .env.example .env && nano .env

   • APP_URL - The full URL
   • APP_TIMEZONE - Your timezone
   • STEAM_API_KEY - Your Steam API Key
   • GOOGLE_API_KEY - Your Google API Key
   • DB_PASSWORD - The password you chose for the lanager MySQL user above

10. Run first-time setup commands:

    php artisan key:generate
    php artisan migrate:fresh
    php artisan db:seed
    php artisan storage:link
    php artisan lanager:update-steam-apps

11. Visit the app URL to check that the installation was successful

12. Enable the scheduled commands:

    crontab -e

    * * * * * php /var/www/lanager/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1
    

13. Disable debugging, set the site's environment to production, and enable MySQL logging:

    nano /var/www/lanager/.env

    APP_DEBUG=false
    APP_ENV=production
    LOG_CHANNEL=stack
    

Troubleshooting

• Enable debugging in your .env file

• Create an issue with the error message(s) you see

• If you don't see an error message, in your .env file:

  • set LOG_CHANNEL=stack
  • check for errors in /var/www/lanager/storage/logs/laravel.log

Getting Started

Become a Super Admin

The first user to log in to LANager is assigned the "Super Admin" role, so ensure you log in once installation has completed. Super Admins can perform any action on the site, including assigning roles to other users.

Create Your LAN Event

Before you can start creating an event schedule, publishing any guides or awarding achievements, you'll need to create a LAN, which represents your whole event, whether it's a single-day or all week long.

Once logged in, click ⚙ > LANs, and then click the + button to go to the LAN creation form. Enter your LAN's details, adding a description with markdown formatting if desired.

Anyone who signs into the LANager during the LAN you've created will be automatically added to the LAN's list of attendees, and taken to the LAN's page, showing the LAN's timetabled events, guides and attendees list.

Create Events & Guides

With your LAN created, you can now create events that will be happening during the LAN, and any relevant guides to help attendees enjoy your party.

From the LAN's page, click the + button next to the Events and Guides headings to go to their creation forms.

Using Links

You can use markdown formatted links in LANs, guides and events, to help attendees find relevant information. For example, you can write a single guide, and link to it on several event pages:

If you need any help, please contact one of our [tournament staff](/lans/4/guides/3) 

It's recommended that you use relative links as above, so that if you change domain, the links continue to work.

Using Images

You can also upload images for displaying on these pages by clicking the "upload images" link below the "description" text box. Once uploaded, click ⚙ > Copy Markdown next to the image, and then paste into the guide, event or LAN's description field.

Display the Live Dashboard

To make it easy for your attendees to see at a glance which games are being played, events that are in progress, and any that are upcoming, on a computer connected to a TV or projector visit the dashboard page by clicking ⚙ > Dashboard, or if you aren't logged in, simply visit:

http://(your LANager install's address)/dashboard

Create and Award Achievements

Click ⚙ > Achievements and then click the + button to create achievements that can then be awarded to users.

Once you've created one or more achievements, you can award them by clicking Achievements on the navigation bar, which will take you to the list of achievements awarded to attendees of the current LAN. At the bottom of the page, choose the achievement and the attendee to award it to, and click Award.

Customise the Navigation Bar

Click ⚙ > Navigation to customise the links shown on the navigation bar. You can link to pages on the LANager, or 3rd party sites, organise the links into dropdown menus, and choose the order that the links appear in the navbar or dropdown.

Upgrading from v0.5.x on Ubuntu 14.04

1. Back up the database and site files

   mysqldump -u lanager -p --extended-insert=FALSE lanager > ~/lanager-backup.sql
   tar -zcvf ~/lanager-backup.tar.gz /var/www/lanager

2. Delete any local changes and get the latest version from GitHub

   cd /var/www/lanager
   git checkout .
   git pull

3. Remove Apache and PHP5

   sudo apt remove php5-common php5-cli php5-mcrypt php5-curl php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5 apache2

4. Install NGINX, PHP7.2 and MySQL 5.7

   cd ~
   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/nginx-mainline
   wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/mysql-apt-config_0.6.0-1_all.deb
   sudo dpkg -i mysql-apt-config_0.6.0-1_all.deb
   rm -f mysql-apt-config_0.6.0-1_all.deb
   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install php7.2-common php7.2-fpm php7.2-mysql php7.2-mbstring php7.2-bcmath php7.2-xml php7.2-zip zip nginx mysql-server
   mysql_upgrade -u root -p

5. Follow steps 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9 from the normal installation instructions

6. Run the following commands

   cd /varr/www/lanager
   php artisan key:generate
   php artisan storage:link
   php artisan lanager:upgrade-database

7. Follow steps 11, 12 and 13 from the normal installation instructions

Development

Requirements

• Vagrant
• VirtualBox
• Composer

Installation:

1. git clone https://github.com/zeropingheroes/lanager && cd lanager
2. cp .env.example .env
3. nano .env
   1. STEAM_API_KEY - Enter your Steam API Key
   2. DB_USERNAME=homestead
4. composer install
5. vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest vagrant-winnfsd
6. vagrant up

Your development environment will now be available available at lanager.localhost:8000

Feedback & Contributions

• Found a bug? Got a great feature idea? Post it to the issue tracker!
• Want to contribute?
  • Fork the project and add the features you want to see
  • Work on new features / bug fixes in the issue tracker
  • Or if you're really hardcore, request commit access

If you want to support the project in a non-technical way, we'd love it if you donated to us: