The wizard runs once, the first time you open your instance. It asks for everything vodmatic needs and tests each answer before letting you past it. Nothing is written to your Ministra database at any point during setup.
You can leave and come back; it remembers where you were.
1. Your account
Choose the username and password you will use to sign in. This is the panel account, not a Ministra account and not your billing login.
You can add more accounts later under Settings. An account is either an admin, who can change things, or a viewer, who can look at every screen and change nothing.
2. Licence
Your licence key is filled in for you. This step simply checks it against our licence server and shows you what your plan covers.
If it says the licence cannot be verified, that is usually a temporary network problem and it will clear on its own. If it persists, open a ticket — nothing else in the wizard will work until the licence is active.
3. The Ministra database
This is the important one. vodmatic writes directly into Ministra's MySQL database, so it needs a database user that can reach it.
- Host — where Ministra's MySQL is. Usually the portal server's public address.
- Port — 3306 unless you have changed it.
- Database name — commonly
stalker_db. - Username and password — a MySQL user allowed to connect from our server's address and to SELECT, INSERT and UPDATE on that database.
The wizard gives you the exact SQL to create that user, ready to copy. Run it on your portal server and come back.
When the test passes, vodmatic reads your portal's layout and tells you which tables it found. Different Ministra versions arrange seasons differently, and it adapts to yours rather than assuming.
The password is stored encrypted and is never shown again. If you need to change it, type a new one; leaving the field untouched keeps the old one.
4. Your media server
Where the films and episodes actually live. See Connecting your media server for the detail of each connection type.
The test lists a few real paths it can see. Read them — if they are not the paths you expected, the base directory is wrong, and every step after this one will be wrong too.
5. Library folders
A folder to scan, and what is in it. You can add more later.
vodmatic samples the folder and proposes a layout — a pattern that says which part of a path is the show and which is the season. It is usually right. Check it against the sample paths it shows you, and correct it if not. See How to name your folders and files.
6. The playback address
The template that turns a file on your media server into a URL a set-top box can play. Getting this wrong is the classic way to fill a catalogue with entries that all fail on play, so the wizard makes you look at a real example and fetches it to check.
See Getting the playback address right.
7. Metadata
Where descriptions, artwork, cast and ratings come from.
- NFO files beside your media, if you have them.
- TMDb, which needs a free API key from themoviedb.org.
You can use both, in an order you choose. With neither, vodmatic still works — the entries are just thinner.
8. Artwork storage
Ministra serves posters from a directory on the portal server. This step asks where that is and how to write to it. The wizard gives you the commands to create an account for it.
You can skip this. Without it, entries are created with a poster address pointing at the original source instead of a local copy.
9. Done
The panel opens. Dry run is on. Leave it on until you have read the Activity screen and are happy with what it says it would do.
