Installing Drupal

Before you can run Drupal, you will need the the following software up and running (this page might help):

• A web server, such as Apache or Internet Information Server
• PHP ideally with a GD library
• MySQL

When installing MySQL remember to install the mysql and mysqli extensions.

Installing Drupal

• Download the latest version of Drupal from drupal.org
• Create a directory on your web server and copy the Drupal software to it.  Ideally this should be configured to be directly accessible from a domain or sub-domain, eg
  • mydomain.org
  • or mydrupalinstance.mydomain.org
• But it can also be a subdirectory, eg
  • mydomain.org/mydrupalinstance

Configuring Drupal

• Your Drupal site will have a subdirectory called "sites/default"

• This directory will have a file called "default.settings.php" - Make a copy of this file, called "settings.php".

  • You can leave the copy in sites/default

  • Or, you can move it to a folder called "sites/mydomain.org" - If you do this the settings will be specific to that domain.  This lets you set up multiple domains - all pointing to the same codebase but with different settings
• Edit settings.php - the principal settings are:
  
  • $db_url = 'mysqli://user:password@hostname/databasename'; // This tells Drupal where to build the database
    
  • $db_prefix = 'someprefix'; // This puts a prefix in front of all the table names - this is useful when you want multiple Drupal sites in the same database schema
• Its's also worth creating a subfolder called files in the same folder as your settings.php file.  Drupal will use this as your site-specific file store for uploaded images etc.  You will need to make sure it is writeable by the web server (chmod 775 is OK).

Install script

• In your web browser, go to http://mydomain.org - you should get lots of mysql error message saying the database tables don't exist, eg "table someprefix_sometablename" does not exist.  This tells you that you are connected to the database - ie your settings.php file is correctly set up.
  
• Now go to http://mydomain.org/install.php - this should take you to an installation screen which will build the tables - the installation may tell you to create directories or set permissions on directories.
• When complete, the installation routine lets you create the first user account (which has full administrative permissions) - do this right away.
  
• You can then go to your homepage http://mydomain.org and start building your site.