eGroupware Tutorial and Installation How To

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

eGroupware 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 eGroupware at http://johnsmith.com/egroupware/.

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 eGroupware to use to store the information it needs.

   Create a database called 'egroupware' with a user named 'egroupware'. 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_egroupware' and the username is the same 'johnsmit_egroupware'.
2. Download the latest version of eGroupware from the eGroupware website and unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop using http://winzip.com.

   You should now have a folder which contains all the files and folders you need to install and run eGroupware.

3. Upload the 'egroupware' 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. Now we can access the installer. In this example, we'll point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/egroupware/setup/'.The script will run through some preinstallation tests. Some of the items will pass, some will have warnings and some will fail. Of the ones that fail, the only ones that we'll have control over are the last two. Your screen should look like this:

   

   We need to change the permissions on two of the folders so that the script can write to these folders. You can do this using the CHMOD command in your FTP program. If you don't know how to do this, check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page. CHMOD the 'egroupware' folder, the 'phpgwapi/images/' folder and the 'fudforum' folder to 777. Once you've changed the permissions on these folders, click the 'Check Installation' link at the top on the left to continue. You should get the same warnings this time apart from the 2 at the bottom. Click the 'continue to the Header Admin' link at the bottom to continue. You should now be on the setup page. The 'Server Root' and 'Include Root' should be correct. You can leave the admin user set to 'admin' and create a password. This will be the account you use to login to the header manager. Change 'Persistent Connections' to 'False'. Scroll down to the database information section and enter the information for the database you created in step #1. In this example, we'll use the following information:

   • DB Type: mysql - Stays the same.
   • DB Host: localhost - Stays the same.
   • Skip the DB Port field
   • DB Name: johnsmit_egroupware
   • DB User: johnsmit_egroupware
   • DB Password: mypassword

   Choose a username and password for the 'Configuration User'. This is the account you'll use to manage the configuration. For this example, we'll use the same username and password as the header manager. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Write config' button to create the header file. You should get a screen saying that your header file was created. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Continue' button to go to the next step.
5. You should now be on the eGroupware login page for the control panel. Enter the admin information into the Setup/Config fields to login to the setup control panel. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Login' button to continue. You should now be on the setup screen for your eGroupware. It will tell you that the database is working but you don't have any tables installed. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Install' button to create the core tables. The script will create the core tables. If you don't receive any error messages, then it was successful. Your screen should now look like this:

   

   Click the 'Re-check My Installation' button to continue. The setup page will refresh and you'll see that now all of the stages have been complete. Your screen should look like this:

   

6. Click on the 'Click here to setup 1 admin account and 3 demo accounts' link to continue. Enter the information you would like to have for your admin account. Check the 'Create demo accounts' checkbox to create the demo accounts. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Save' button to save these settings. You should now be back at the eGroupware setup page. Click the 'Back to user login' link at the top left of the screen. If you get an error message saying that the lock function failed, create a support ticket on the help page with the name of your database and lock access will be granted to your database. Refresh the page once lock access has been granted. You should now be at the login page. Enter the information you created for your admin account. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Login' button to login to your eGroupware. You should now be at the admin control panel for your eGroupware management system. eGroupware is now installed and the tutorial is complete! Your screen should look like this:

   

   For more information on how to use eGroupware once it's installed, check out the eGroupware User Manual.

Back to web hosting tutorials page