Lessons learnt from an installation

I have just completed a manual installation of drupal 5 on my personal server. I decided to blog about it as I went through the process - as my own personal mission - with the aim of providing some guidelines to anyone else wanting to manually install drupal themselves.

i am a geek on a mission[1]. mission drupal 5 to be exact.

the tactic:

• read INSTALL.txt word for word.
• try to understand it.
• you will do well young one.

the frontline operation:

• download, extract, and copy the resultant drupal 5 folder into a directory within your root directory. check - using ftp program.
  
• create the drupal database. umm. where? how? oh… i finally found it on cpanel’s MySQL account maintenance, no need to delve into phpMyAdmin.
• create the drupal user. check - easy once you know where to look, similar to creating the db.
• link the user to the db. check! now the db configuration looks like the configurations for the other db’s i already have installed.
  
• run the install script. install script? i must run it? but when i point to the folder it doesn’t do anything. it gives me an access denied. *help* go back to the beginning…
  
  • “move the contents of the directory”. hmm. maybe i shouldn’t have moved the whole directory, but only it’s contents.
  • ha! it works! but now to give access to the settings.php file. also helps if you take note of the location of the settings file
  • voila! see how it runs!
  • remember to restore the access permissions on the settings.php file

• configure drupal. *tears fill my eyes*… it worked! i can see the config screen.

the outcome:

• i win!
• drupal 5’s so pretty!

[1]actually, the use of the word geek when referring to me is very liberal. considering i haven’t done much *real* programming in yonks… i am an enthusiast…

Tags: drupal, drupal5, lessons learned, victoire

This is a repost of a post I originally published on chilibean, a blog I co-author on.