Introduction

This is the most up to date information available on how to install CMS e107, and supercedes any general information included with a particular release.

In most cases the install should go smoothly providing you follow these instructions carefully. If you encounter problems please refer to the
troubleshooting help and then check the installation/upgrade forum. Before you start with e107 you must know the install procedure and
requirements.

Requirements

* e107 requires a web-server with:

PHP 4.3.0 (or newer)
MySQL 3.22 (or newer - 4.1 or newer recommended)

Contact your host if you’re not sure if you have these installed. The configuration of PHP must be acceptable - in particular:
the realpath() function must be operational.
Some features require access to a suitably configured mail server - SMTP (preferred), PHP or ’sendmail’.
Some image-related features require either GD or ImageMagick

Please Note: that many of the free hosts (and some others) restrict (in some cases severely) functionality in ways which prevent e107 from operating properly.

Note: MySQL version 4.1 or later is recommended - e107 up to version 0.7.8 will run on versions as old as 3.22, but it is likely that support for the older versions will be dropped at some point in the future. Ideally choose a host which supports mySQL 5.x and PHP 5.x, or is committed to doing so soon.

* If you host your own site you can download PHP and MySQL and install them yourself, both are free. You can also use AMP packages like easyphp, XAMPP, apache2triad or MAMP (for MAC) (all of which include php and apache as a package but not necessarily the latest versions of each) to host a web site on your Home PC if you have a fast Internet connection. Pay attention to security issues if you choose this route - many of the ‘all in one’ packages (intentionally) have minimal security as default, since they are intended for local installations.

* You will need your MySQL username and password, and a database for content storage. Don’t worry if you only have one database, e107 is happy to share it’s database with other applications.

* A full e107 install requires approximately 10MB of disk space on your server, though it is recommended that plugins that you don’t intend to use are not uploaded to the server. This is helpful in 3 ways - it constrains disk space usage, will have a performance impact and may help with security. You will probably need additional disk space for some of the site content - potentially a lot more space if you are uploading large documents, high-resolution photos, video clips and similar.

e107 will happily run in your webserver root or in a sub-directory

* After unzipping the package
* Open your FTP client and connect to your webserver
* Move into the folder on your webserver where web pages are stored, generally it’s ‘public_html’, ‘www’ or ‘html’
* Copy all the files from the unzipped e107 package onto your webserver - this could take a while, time for a cup of coffee!

2. Unzipping the package directly into your server

If you have the correct permissions on your server you can use an alternative (and much quicker) method to upload the files:

* Download the e107 package in tar.gz format from e107.org
* Using your FTP client, upload the tar.gz to your webserver without unzipping it first
* Now open a shell prompt, and navigate to the folder where you uploaded the e107 tar.gz and type tar xvzf file.tar.gz to unpack the archive.

* Note. this can also be achieved with a web based file manager. Many cpanel installations come with a file manager or you may download a php based file manager to use. These generally have the ability to unzip/unarchive files.

Installing a language pack to your e107

Many translations are available for this CMS and you may install as many languages on your site as you wish. Get them here !

Ensure that you use a language pack corresponding to the version of the e107 package you’re using (otherwise, you may see messages of the form LAN_BANNER_XX instead of comprehensible text).

* The language pack are zipped with the same folder pattern as the e107 core. You just have to extract the language archive to the root of your e107.
* Use either method 1 or 2 to do so.

Running The Installation Script

Now open your web browser and navigate to install.php, for example click to open link in new window or click to open link in new window:

* Step 1 - If all the files have been uploaded successfully, you will see the first page of the install script. Choose the language you wish to use during the procedure and click the button to continue

* Step 2 - e107 will now carry out a series of tests to see if requirements are met and all files that need permissions set are ok to be written to. If you get a warning about mySQL don’t worry too much, some versions of mySQL don’t return the correct version, or return nothing at all. Click on the button to continue if all criteria have been met, or else repair the problem and retest.

* Step 3 - Next you have to enter your mySQL details. Enter your server name (generally ‘localhost’), username and password. If you don’t know your username and/or password contact your webhosts.

Now enter the name of the database you want e107 to use.

If you have the correct permissions you can create the database directly from the install script should you want to. (Note that some hosts modify the database name which you enter - for example by prepending a server name, or adding in the user name. Thus it is often simplest to manually create an empty database, so that you can see the name to use).

e107 can also share a database with other applications - you can specify a prefix which is prepended to all the table names to distinguish them. Just ensure this prefix is different to any which is already in use.
If necessary, follow these instructions : Detailed instruction to connect to your MySQL database

* Step 4 - If all is well e107 should now connect to your mySQL database, if any error messages are shown return to the previous page and make sure you entered your details correctly Now you have to enter your main admin details. Enter your username, password and email address, you can change your email address and password at a later stage but your username cannot be changed, so make sure you enter it correctly

* Step 5 - e107 will now create the mySQL database tables and populate them with settings etc. You have to create an admin accout for you to login to the administration page

* Step 6 - If all is well, the last button will take you to your new website. There, all done, that wasn’t too bad was it?!

CONGRATULATION!!! You’ve don’t it!! For the next lesson we will learn how to manage your site on the admin area.