How To Install PHPNuke For The First Time

Description: This quick tutorial will briefly touch on how to install PHPNuke

Version: 1.0

Added on: 09 March 2008

Author: Ped

Difficulty Level: Intermediate

Views: 1030

Rating: 10.0 (1 Vote)

Detailed Profile •

Welcome!
So you have decided to bite the bullet and build your first web site and quickly realized you don't even know where to begin. You don't know HTML an Using and Online service to make your site doesn't seem very appealing. You decided to check out various Content Management Systems and settled on PHP-Nuke which bought you to this site. Were glad you did.

I am not going to bore you with the history of PHP-Nuke what I will do though is give you a straight forward hands on approach to installing PHP-Nuke and since I wrote this tutorial with the beginner in mind I will try not to get too technical, however this guide will assume that you have a host that has PHP and MYSql on their server and is running phpMyAdmin (check with your host if you are unsure about these things). If you are using tripod then you don?t have these things that much I can tell you. We are also going to assume that you have setup your FTP client. This tutorial will only cover installing PHP-Nuke if you are looking for answers on how to install other components then this tutorial isn?t for you.

Ok Now What?
Now that you have settled on using PHP-Nuke to make your website you need to obviously pick a version. I recommend that you always pick one of the latest if not the latest version of PHP-Nuke and of course if need be all the latest patches (we recommend you download a stable nuke version like Ravens Distro available for download here http://ravenphpscripts.com ). Once downloaded, extract the entire contents of the archive (.zip, .tar.gz or .rar) to a folder on your local computer, I like to use the sites name for the name of the folder yoursite_com for example. Once the archive is extracted you should have the following sub-folders inside of it:


AddOnFiles
html
PatchLevel3.3_Docs
UtilityFiles

The html folder should have the following sub-folders inside of itself:


abuse
admin
blocks
cache
classes
db
HowToInstall
images
import
includes
INSTLATION
language
modules
rnlogs
ShortLinks
themes


as well as several .php , .shtml and various other files

The Database
The next step in setting up PHP-Nuke is installing the database. Assuming your host provided you with some sort of a Control Panel, you should have an icon in it called MYSql Databases. Once opened you will need to provide the SQL server with a database name, a user name and a password, ask your host if you are unsure what icon to use. Try to not use the same user name and password that you used for the control panel.

The names of the SQL database, username and password should also not be common dictionary word or name. Use gibberish like the following:



Username: clan3r5
Password: a2389themes
Database Name: clan3r5site



These are just examples you can name them whatever you like just remember to write them down you will need them again later. Create your database put in the name and click Add Db it?s that simple Once the database is named and you have created a user you will need to add the user to the database. If you are unsure of any of the steps ask someone who knows. Like your host or a friend who already has a PHP-Nuke Website. Now that you have that done you can open phpMyadmin and run your SQL query which will set up the database tables and the initial data. To do this click on your database then click the tab at the top of the screen that is aptly named SQL. You will see 2 text boxes on the browser now one will be called location of text file. Click browse and of course browse to the location of the nuke.sql file which you extracted from the archive earlier. Once you have found that click Open and the location of the nuke.sql file will be given to phpMyadmin simply click go and depending on the speed of your internet connection and the server you should have a functional database in about 2 minutes.

The config.php file
The heart of PHP-Nuke has to be the config.php file without it your Nuke install will not function. That being said we have to know how to edit it, with that being said there is only one small section of this rather large file that we need to concern ourselves with. That would be the Database and System config section. It looks something like this before it is edited:

Code:

$dbhost = 'localhost'; $dbuname = 'rnv220'; $dbpass = 'rnv220'; $dbname = 'rnv22000'; $prefix = 'nuke'; $user_prefix = 'nuke'; $dbtype = 'MySQL'; $sitekey = 'SdFk*fa2rnv21076v28367-dm52?6w69.3a2fDS+e9'; $gfx_chk = 7; $subscription_url = '; $admin_file = 'admin'; $tipath = 'images/topics/'; $display_errors = false;  //This should only be used (set to "true") when testing locally and not in a production environment

Code:

$dbhost = 'localhost'; $dbuname = 'clan3r5';  //Username you created for the database $dbpass = 'a2389themes';  //Password you created $dbname = 'clan3r5site';  //Database name you created $prefix = 'nuke'; $user_prefix = 'nuke'; $dbtype = 'MySQL'; $sitekey = 'SdFk*fa2rnv21076v28367-dm52?6w69.3a2fDS+e9'; $gfx_chk = 7; $subscription_url = '; $admin_file = 'admin'; $tipath = 'images/topics/'; $display_errors = false;  //This should only be used (set to "true") when testing locally and not in a production environment

The above config.php file was taken from PHP-Nuke 7.3 depending on what version you use there could be a few minor differences. You should notice that the $dbname, $dbuser and $dbpass have all been filled in or replaced with the names and passwords we created earlier. Also take note of the $sitekey we changed it and you should also when editing your config.php file. Do not change any other settings below this section unless you really know what you are doing. Now save the file and get ready to upload.

Uploading the files:

This is the easy part all we have to do is decide folder or not to folder. I prefer not putting my Nuke installations in a folder some modules and add-ons don?t seem to like it very much. While others say it makes no difference. It?s all just personal preference I suppose. For the sake of the tutorial we will put everything into root (public_html). To do this we need to open the folder we extracted the archive too, then navigate to the html folder (provided it isn?t already open). Then upload everything in the html folder (except the folder itself) to our website. Depending on the speed of your internet connection and the server the upload time can take anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple hours. Either way once it is done and if you followed all these steps you should have a working Nuke installation. So go ahead take a look open your site. If you have no errors and see a blue and white website then you have successfully installed PHP-Nuke. Now go ahead to your admin page. http://mywebsite.com/admin.php and create your Admin God account (this is the main admin account) and your first user. Remember make this username and password different then your cpanel username and password.