Building Websites - Website Building

Step One - preparation:

Create an empty database for your installation using PhpMyAdmin or whatever tool your host supplies to administer databases. Sometimes you can ask them to create the database for you if you are not sure what to do. I'm using plesk in this screenshot:

Create a user with permission to access this database and assign the user a password.

Step two: - Installation

Download the zip file and unzip it to your hard drive. For this installation I'm using the rocketlauncher from rockettheme and I suggest you do too. It gives you a great template to work with and it's cheap:

Unzipped all the files?

 

Using your favourite FTP package upload the entire unzipped package to your root (usually httpdocs)

 

Once you've completed the transfer go to http://www.yourdomain.com and the installation routine will automatically fire up.

This part of the installation is the bit where most people fall down on and spend frustrating hours trying to make it work.

It's at the screen which asks for your database details that causes most of the problems.

Understand this:

The installation routine works perfectly. If you keep getting the message "unable to connect to database" it's not because you have a fault with your computer, software, remote installation, remote server or anything else you can think to blame it on. It's simply because you don't have the database details correct.

Go through the steps again and make sure you write the names and password down in your domain spreadsheet so that you don't get them mixed up.

Why have a domain spreadsheet?

Because you'll be adding all of the affiliate url's and passwords and loads more stuff besides. Keep it all in one place.

The DATABASE NAME is the name you give to the database when you create it in PhpMyAdmin or whatever database admin tool your webhost software uses. You can name the database the same as your domain name without the extension. So in this case it's "limitplayer".

The DATABASE USER is the user you create to access the database. It's NOT your FTP Username and password.

HOT TIP: Also notice that in the field where it asks for HOST NAME it's most common to put "localhost" however using "127.0.0.1" (which refers to the local machine) is a safer option and preferred. This is often the cause of scripts malfunctioning and screwing up.

Next give your site a name and enter the email address details and your admin name and password. Add all these details to your spreadsheet along with your ftp and database details. Don't forget to click on the "install sample data" option to populate your database.

Once you've finished the installation you need to copy the configuration file and paste it into configuration.php. You can rename the configuration.php-dist to configuration.php, empty the file and then paste your new data into it.

Lastly you need to remove the installation directory to be able to access the site.

HOT TIP: Instead of deleting the installation directory, rename it to something else like installationstart so that you still have it available if you want to do the installation again at any point. Remember to completely remove the installation directory once your site goes "live".

All done?

Now we need to make sure we have all of the directory permissions set properly:

Choose "system info" from the help dropdown.

This will show you all the directories that need to be made writeable for your installation to work properly. Use your FTP program to right click on the directories and mark them "777" or fully writeable.

When you've finished, refresh the screen to make sure you didn't miss anything. Directories that don't get made writeable can give you untold grief further down the line.

 

Now change the session lifetime so that we don't keep getting logged out halfway through writing an article! You can make it any number you like but I like to set it very high like 20000 minutes so I never get logged out.

Next we need to turn on the SEO rewriting:

Don't forget to rename the htaccess.txt to .htaccess or it won't work!

Change the global site description and meta tags to something more useful:

All done! A working Joomla installation ready for you to give a custom job and pimp! A great start for our Learn Limit Poker site.

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