PHPWebsite Tutorial and Installation How To

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

PHPwebsite is free, open source software licensed under the GNU GPL and GNU LGPL. This means that you can use and distribute it freely 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 a phpwebsite at http://johnsmith.com/cms/.

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 phpwebsite to use to store the information it needs.

   Create a database called 'phpwebsite' with a user named 'phpwebsite'. 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_phpwebsite' and the username is the same 'johnsmit_phpwebsite'.

2. Download the latest version of phpwebsite from the phpwebsite site and unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop using http://www.winzip.com. Rename the folder 'phpwebsite-0.9.3-2-full' to 'cms' and use your ftp program to upload this folder to the 'html' folder on your web hosting account. If you need help doing this, check out our FTP tutorials on our tutorials page.
3. Once the PHPWebsite files are finished uploading, you need to change permissions on some of the files and folders. You can do this with the CHMOD command using your FTP program. If you need help doing this, check out our FTP tutorials on our tutorials page.

   The files and folders you need to CHMOD and the settings you need to give them are as follows:

   • CHMOD the 'images' folder to 777
   • CHMOD the 'files' folder to 777
   • CHMOD the 'conf' folder to 777

   Once you get all the permissions changed, you can now access the setup wizard. In this example, we'll access the URL 'http://www.johnsmith.com/csm/setup/'. Your screen should look like this:

   

4. We set up database information for mysql in step #1 so we'll fill in the field on this page with that info. In this example, 'Database Username' and 'Database Name' will both be set to 'johnsmit_phpwebsite' and 'Database Password' should be set to the password you created in step #1. All the other fields can stay at the default values except for the 'Install Password' field. Choose a password for this field in case you have to reinstall or update the phpwebsite installation.

   Click on the 'Create config file' button to save these settings. Your screen should now look like this:

   

5. This page just tells you that your information was saved to the config file and that after the installation you should change the permissions on the conf folder so no one could get into your folder and change the values. Click the 'Click here to continue with the installation' link to continue.

   You should now be at the installation utility page. You screen should look like this:

   

   Enter your installation password you created on the last page and click the 'Continue' button to go on. Now your screen should look like this:

   

6. You need to use this form to create an account that you will use to manage your phpwebsite. Fill out the form using any values that you would like, but make sure to remember the information. Click on the 'Continue' button to continue. Now you should be on this screen:

   

   On this page, you can choose which modules you'd like to install with the PHPWebsite installation. You can also choose not to install any at this time and then install the modules you'd like to use from the admin control panel. Modules are different blocks of information used or not used for your website. For instance, if you would like a calendar included on your website, you would check the 'Calendar' checkbox to install that module. If you would like to create a poll on your website, you would check the 'Poll' checkbox to install that module, and so on. For the sake of this tutorial, we'll install the core of phpwebsite only and once you login with your admin account, you can customize phpwebsite how you see fit. Click on the 'Install core only' button to continue.
7. The page that you should be on now will give you a list of everything that was required with the phpwebsite installation. All of them should have installed successfully. If you have received any errors, go back and make sure you filled out the correct information for the mysql database fields. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the 'Go to my installation' link to continue. You should now be at the login page. Enter the login and password you created for your admin account to login and start configuring your phpwebsite to your preference. The PHPWebsite tutorial is now complete. The login page looks like this:

   

   For more information on how to use PHPwebsite once it's setup, check out the PHPwebsite Manual.

Back to web hosting tutorials page