Site administration

For those who manage the Joomla site on which Regulus is installed. The other pages: Creating a tournament, Managing a tournament, Importing and exporting.

Component options

In administration, Components → Regulus → Options:

• Groups that may save tournaments: only users of these groups create groups of arbiters, save tournaments online and send invitations. If you choose no group, nobody can.
• Site address (for example https://www.example.org): the address used in e-mail links. Set it always.
• FIDE list: the combined list (default, a single file with standard, rapid and blitz) or the three separate lists.

While the first two options are missing, the Regulus pages in administration signal this.

Updating the FIDE list with cron

Player search uses a copy of the FIDE list saved in the site database. To keep it up to date, a command is run periodically, usually with cron. FIDE publishes a new list at the beginning of each month: an update once a week is enough.

The command

php /path/to/your/site/administrator/components/com_regulus/cli/update-fide-list.php

The exact path of your site is shown in the Regulus pages in administration, along with the date of the list in use and the number of players.

The command:

1. downloads the list from the FIDE site in the cache/regulus folder of the site (approximately 45 MB);
2. imports it into a staging table, while the search continues to use the previous list;
3. replaces the list in use with the new one and deletes the file downloaded the previous time.

If something goes wrong (download interrupted, invalid file) the previous list is kept and the command ends with an error. It takes approximately one minute.

First try, by hand

From the terminal, connected to the server with the user who owns the site files:

php /path/to/your/site/administrator/components/com_regulus/cli/update-fide-list.php

At the end it prints a line like:

FIDE list (combined) of 2026-10-08 imported: 1932459 players in 32 s (fide-20261009075642-combined.zip)

Then open Regulus in administration: the list status shows the new date.

Setting up cron

With terminal access, open the scheduled tasks of the user who owns the site files:

crontab -e

and add a line, for example every Monday at 4:30:

30 4 * * 1 /usr/bin/php /path/to/your/site/administrator/components/com_regulus/cli/update-fide-list.php >> /path/to/logs/regulus-fide.log 2>&1

• 30 4 * * 1 means: minute 30, hour 4, any day of the month, any month, on Monday.
• Write the full path of PHP (which php shows it) and use the same version the site runs with (for example Joomla 6 requires PHP 8.3 or later).
• The part >> … 2>&1 keeps the result of each run in a log file; without it, cron usually sends it by e-mail to the user.

From the hosting panel (cPanel, Plesk, ISPConfig…): look for Cron Jobs or Scheduled tasks, choose the frequency (once a week) and paste the same line as the command, without the first five time fields.

Requirements

• PHP from the command line with the zip and curl extensions (or allow_url_fopen enabled).
• The server must be able to download from ratings.fide.com.
• Space: approximately 45 MB for the file in the cache and approximately 320 MB in the database; during the update, for a short time, double.
• Run the command with the user who owns the site files, so it can write and delete files in cache/regulus.

If it does not work

Elo Italia lookup

For players without a FIDE ID, and to supplement with the Italian rating those on the FIDE list, Regulus queries the player search of torneionline.com, passing through the site. It is available to signed-in users, up to 100 searches an hour per user; the answers remain in memory for one day. It requires no configuration.