Table of Contents

Install

Download phpwcms

The current stable version of phpwcms you will find at Projekt-Repository. Be sure to download the complete version of phpwcms only – not the patch package. Choose the compressed archive you like: on Windows take ZIP compressed archive, on Linux and Mac OS X it is better to download the GZ compressed archive. Use a webbrowser for downloading the install package onto your harddisk. If you have shell access on Linux or Mac OS X you can use “wget” for direct download to the web server.

Latest release always available here
Stable developer version (commended)
→ Committed Changes → to

→→ Docu: DEV - Version ZIP Format

<note tip>However, I always recommend using the Docu: DEV - Version ZIP Format as this version is considered stable and includes the latest changes. </note>

Unpack/Upload phpwcms

When you have finished downloading uncompress the archive to a new directory. Be cautious to save all included path information. If you do not have installed an uncompression software on Windows try e.g. totalcommander, FileZilla or PowerArchiver. The content should look like the screenshot (totalcommander).

Now open an FTP connection to your web space. You have to think about where to put phpwcms online. You can put phpwcms in any folder on your webspace – or put it directly into the web sever root. Copy the complete uncompressed structure via FTP to your web server. When this is done you have to check access rights (permissions) for special files and folders


All other files listed above can be set to 644, directories to 755. Sometimes it can help to set the mode to 766 for the following directories: template, inc_css. If you have further access problems try to set all files and directories to 777 (not recommend at all).

Start semi-automatic setup process

After haveing copied phpwcms installation files to your webserver successfully you will start the first-time semi-automatic setup process by using the following link:

http://www.example.com/path_2_phpwcms/setup/index.php

On top of the setup index page is an info field displaying information about the system, server software, PHP version and the path where phpwcms is installed. If you have a PHP version <4.2.1 you should not continue – recommended PHP version >4.3.0. To continue you have to agree to the GPL licence – then click the button to go to step 1 of the phpwcms setup script.

Info: Inside the setup folder is a file called “setup.conf.inc.php”. All setup values will be stored there. You can also edit this file manually. Look for “phpwcms_init.sql” to setup the required db tables manually.

Step 1: MySQL database infos

Insert your MySQL database infos like the host (default: localhost) or IP address of the MySQL server, your MySQL username/password and db name. Attention! The setup process can create the phpwcms tables only and NOT the MySQL table itself. If you want to separate phpwcms database tables from other tables inside your database you can define a table prefix. This is not really neccessary because phpwcms table names do always start with “phpwcms_”. The prefix is then generating a table named like “myprefix” + “_” + “phpwcms_”. If your MySQL server supports persistent database connection you will let the correspinding mark checked – this is speeding up the db queries. Large providers may disallow this feature. In this case just uncheck mark “use persistent db con”.

If you are installing phpwcms for the first time and want to let the setup process create all db tables mark “create all db tables” checked.

Then click “send db data”. If everything is OK let's go on…

Step 2: create site infos and admin account

Normally you do not have to fill in difficult things here. Insert the base URL ONLY in field site name. Complete the base URL with an ending slash ”/”. Attention! Do not add any additional path info like …mydomain.com/phpwcms/”. This will be defined later.

Fill in the login information for admin user and admin email address. phpwcms comes without any predefined user login information. You have to define it yourself. Do not forget to check “ceate admin account” if the setup script should create the given account for you.

Step 3: phpwcms path values

There is not so much to say about it here. Read any field info attentively. You can rename default directories to whatever you want. Attention! Do not add any starting or ending slash ”/” to phpwcms path values.

To use a directory outside phpwcms root use path names like this: ”../dir_outside”.

There is an additional directory not listed here. It is “picture”. This is the base dir for the {IMAGE.. } replacement tag. It can not be renamed at the moment. So be sure that it is existing inside the phpwcms root directory.

Step 4: phpwcms content values

The most important values are “content width” and “preview image”. The content width value is important for rendering image lists. It adjusts the image width. That ensures that your content is rendered very well. The preview image value defines maximum width and height of preview images. Remember that preview images will be displayed if an image is checked as zoomable. If this is too large your site visitor may have problems. This then will result in big image file sizes too.

Step 5: Ready to start phpwcms?

Step 5 is to verify defined path values. Check that possibly every directory is marked as OK. Maybe you can ignore RED alerts if you have set access rights as described above. I will test this. If you are unsure set every listed directories to usermode 777. You will get error messages very fast if there is a problem ;-)

Download the finished configuration file ”/setup/setup.conf.inc.php” and put this into ”/config/phpwcms/*”. If neccessary rename the config file from “setup.conf.inc.php” → “conf.inc.php”.

Security info

If you have successfully adjusted phpwcms delete the setup folder. Make a backup of your current “conf.inc.php” file. It is possible to edit this file manually.

Possible problems - IIS

Sometimes the $_SERVER[“DOCUMENT_ROOT”] var is not available in PHP under Microsoft Internet Information Server. If so you have to insert the root value manually in the conf.inc.php. Do it like this: 

$_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] = '/home/where_my_web_root_is';