dotProject Tutorial and Installation How To

This tutorial describes how to use the dotProject project management software with your NEXCESS.NET web hosting account. NEXCESS.NET specializes in hosting dotProject software and this tutorial is meant to help you quickly setup your site with our web hosting service.

dotProject is open source, meaning that you can use and distribute it as you'd like as long as you don't change it.

For the sake of this tutorial we'll assume that you own the domain 'johnsmith.com' and are setting up dotProject at http://johnsmith.com/dotproject/.

Follow these steps to complete the tutorial:

1. The first thing to do is to run through the SiteWorx MySQL tutorial and create a database for dotProject to use to store the information it needs.

   Create a database called 'dotproject' with a user named 'dotproject'. When you do this SiteWorx will prefix the database and user names with some text resembling your domain name.

   With our example domain of 'johnsmith.com' the database name is 'johnsmit_dotproject' and the username is the same 'johnsmit_dotproject'.
2. Download the latest version of dotProject from the dotProject website and unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop using http://winzip.com. You should now have a folder on your desktop with all the files and folders you need to install and run dotProject. Open up the 'includes/config-dist.php' file in your text editing program. We need to enter the information for the database that you created in step #1 into this file so it can be read by the script. Scroll down until you see the line that starts with '// DATABASE ACCESS INFORMATION [DEFAULT example]'. In this section, we will change the information for the database. For this example, we'll change the information as follows:
   • $dPconfig['dbtype'] = "mysql"; // ONLY MySQL is supported at present - Stays the same.
   • $dPconfig['dbhost'] = "localhost"; - Stays the same.
   • $dPconfig['dbname'] = "johnsmit_dotproject"; // Change to match your DotProject Database Name
   • $dPconfig['dbuser'] = "johnsmit_dotproject"; // Change to match your MySQL Username
   • $dPconfig['dbpass'] = "mypassword"; // Change to match your MySQL Password

   Your screen should look like this:

   

   Scroll down until you see the line that starts with '// local settings [DEFAULT example WINDOWS]'. In this section, we will change the information for the server. For this example, we'll change the information as follows:

   • $dPconfig['root_dir'] = "/home/johnsmith.com/html/dotproject"; // No trailing slash
   • $dPconfig['company_name'] = "John Smiths Company"; - Can be changed according to your preference.
   • $dPconfig['page_title'] = "dotProject"; - Can be changed according to your preference.
   • $dPconfig['base_url'] = "http://johnsmith.com/dotproject";
   • $dPconfig['site_domain'] = "johnsmith.com";

   The rest of the values in this file can be left as is. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Save and close the dotProject 'config-dist.php' file and then rename it to 'config.php'.
3. Upload the 'dotproject' folder to your web hosting account. You should do this using an FTP Program. If you need help with FTPing files, you can check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page.
4. You now need to import the 'db/dotproject_102.sql' file into your database in order to create the tables. You can do this using the phpMyAdmin system. If you don't know how to do this, check out the phpMyAdmin tutorial on our tutorials page.
5. Once the tables have been imported, we can access the index page. In this example, we'll point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/dotproject/index.php'. You should now be on the login page. Enter 'admin' as the 'Username' and 'passwd' as the 'Password'. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'login' button to continue. dotProject is now installed. You should now be on the admin control panel page. The dotProject tutorial is now complete. Your screen should look like this:

   

   For more information on how to use dotProject once it's installed, check out the dotProject FAQs.

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