XOOPS is an extensible, OO (Object Oriented), easy to use dynamic web content management system written in PHP. XOOPS is the ideal tool for developing small to large dynamic community websites, intra company portals, corporate portals, weblogs and much more. Read the All about
Register or
LoginXOOPS page
for more details.
That´s the description so far. Now how do we get that “extensible and easy to use dynamic web content management system” installed ? Obviously the first step to accomplish that is to download the script itself, which can be done from the XOOPS Homepage. Just scroll down a bit and look for the Downloads Module in the left sidebar. Pretty simple so far.
Now you ended up with a ZIP archive that needs to be extracted. Doing that shouldn´t put you into a lot of problems, in case you have no idea how to UNZIP an archive…..bring your computer back to the store and get a Playstation instead.
Once the archive is extracted, you will see a lot of directories, only one being important for a basic install though. The directory we need to deal with is the htdocs one as it contains all the stuff necessary for us to set XOOPS up properly.
This is the directory we, or better, you need to upload to your webserver. So fire up your FTP client and upload all files and folder to your webserver. Thinking about uploading it into a subdirectory of your root directory ? You could do that, but wouldn´t it make much more sense to upload it to the document root directory of your server ? So every visitor gets the CMS frontend displayed when he keys in the domain name of yours. Makes a lot more sense then “hiding” it in some subdirectory imho. Anyway, choice where to upload it is yours, just upload it so we can continue.
Done uploading now ? Good for you. Until now it hasn´t exactly been a mind boggling procedure or has it ? Thanks to the upload being finished we can now start the Webinstaller Interface of XOOPS by just pointing your browser to
Register or
Loginhttp://witty.domainname.here/install/
Obviously you have to replace witty.domainname.here with your domain. Just thought i´d like to point that out. Doing this will open the Webinstaller and thrust XOOPS first installation screen right in your face. Looks like this:
Huh, a language selection screen. However, if you trie to select your language you will blatantly fail as the only language by default is english. What´t the point of that screen then, you might ask. Good question, i haven´t got a feckin´clue as to why this screen exists at all. Anyway, just select the language of your choice (muahahahhaa) and click Next. This will bring you to another funny screen, i swear those guys that developed XOOPS must have a pretty good sense of humor. Just look at what this screen says:
Yeah right, if i wouldn´t have prepared a WWW server running PHP i for sure wouldn´t be seeing this message, wouldn´t i ? Apart from that there is nothing much on this screen that you should care about, so just read over it, nod meaningful and click Next again, which will take you to the check of file permissions. As almost every other cms XOOPS needs write permissions on certain directors and / or files so it is able to store uploaded information such as avatars, pictures, movies and all that. If you are lucky, your screen will look like this:
Ah, everything green. That is one´s dream when installing a script. Not having to CHMOD a couple of files and directories. I could swear you aren´t that lucky as i am and therefore will see all or some of them being red which means you need to modify permissions so XOOPS can write to those files/directories. To do that just connect to your FTP server, make your way to the files/directories XOOPS is having a grudge wit and CHMOD them to 0777. Then recheck permissions in the XOOPS installer and you should be all set. Click Next and you will suffer some serious headache in case you haven´t got any idea on what a virtual and physical path to files is. I´ll try to go easy on you, but have a look at the screenshot first. There is a ton of things to fill in.
Yes, here comes the database part we all have eagerly been waiting for. Well, at least i was. If you can read you shouldn´t have a hard time filling in the required information. All the mysql details you should either know or look them up in your cPanel account or whatever other Hosting interface you use. Not too difficult, and if you can´t find them either leave a comment or post in the forum and i´ll see if i can help you out. There are a few more options on that screen that might look weird at first. Let´s start with the
Use persistent connection?
Leave that at “no” and your mysql server will be very grateful. Seriously, leave it at “no”, don´t touch it unless it´s set to “yes” for some strange reason. Next and probably the most irritating thing you have to deal with during setup are the virtual and physical path. Both of them need to be entered for XOOPS to work properly. The easier one, the Virtual Path is nothing but the URL you enter in your browser to open your XOOPS installation. That should be easy for you to fill in.
The more difficult thing is the physical path which is the actual path to your XOOPS installation on your server. This changes from host to host, since everyone sets up their paths differently. So if you have trouble with finding the physical path to enter contact your hosting support. They should be able to help you out. Good thing is, that chances that XOOPS will detect the physical path itself are really good. Unfortunately that doesn´t work on all server setups. Just have a look at whether XOOPS filled something in there by default. If yes, then it might be the correct path already.
As soon as you filled in all information click Next and you will see a confirmation screen presenting all the details you just entered. Make sure they are all correct, if not go back and correct them.
With the details being correct we click Next and wonder what happens now. It´s about time for XOOPS to populate the database meaning that it now creates all the tables necessary for XOOPS to work and also does create the configuration file as you can see in the screenshot below
Everything in this screen should be green, if there´s anything red you are screwed. Though i´ve never gotten an error here and it´s highly unlikely that you will. The next screen though is more likely to throw an error in your general direction. There might also be some pointing and laughing. Now XOOPS checks virtual and physical paths, so if you screwed up earlier by providing an incorrect path XOOPS will now give you a beating.
If there is anything wrong here you are given the chance to go back, correct the path and check again. If everything turns green it´s time to click Next again. If you can´t figure out what the physical path is, contact your hosting support. They will tell you, well, most of them will tell you. I´ve dealt with hosting support of which i was thinking that a trained monkey could have done a better job. Anyway, Next please.
Yay, another check. This time XOOPS would like to know if you are still satisfied with the details you provided for the Database Server. If you have provided correct details during setup all should be green, if anything is red think twice about what you have done wrong, go correct it and when returned to this screen click Next.
Hooray, mysql details were correct. XOOPS found the database and is all excited about that. Now it would love to write data into the database, so let´s do it. Continue by clicking Next and XOOPS will start abusing your mysql database just like in the screenshot below
Once all the tables have been created, click Next again which will take you to the step which lets you create an Admin User for XOOPS. Well, there isn´t really much that you could do wrong in that screen, just come up with an Admin Name, provide a vaild email address, enter a password and confirm it. Then click Next.
That has been pretty much the last part of the installation that required user intervention, once you filled in the details you will see this screen, which at the bottom already indicates that the next step is “Finish”. I don´t mean that languagewise though..
Click Next, and you are done with the installation (according to the screenshot).
Yepp, all done. Let´s take a first look at the newly installed XOOPS and see what a clean installation looks like. Before you start messing around with XOOPS there are two steps left to do:
First of all you should remove the installation directory from your server. Secondly the file mainfile.php needs to be CHMOD 0444 so noone can actually write to it. If you don´t do the steps after installing XOOPS it will tell you to do so the first time you log into the admin interface…do it now
Administration
