Magento Tutorial for Beginners (Part 2)
Part 2: Magento Installation
This article is most helpful for users who have installed Magento before and just need a reminder of the major steps in the process.
System Requirements
Magento must be run on a Unix-based web server, with PHP 5.2+ and MySQL 4.1.20+. These instructions assume you have first set up a web server with a standard LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, & PHP).
Supported server environment is:
- Supported Operating Systems: Linux server
- Supported Web Servers: Apache 1.3.x or Apache 2
- PHP Compatibility: 5.2.0 and above with Safe mode off
- MySQL: 4.1.20 and above
For evaluation and development purposes, Magento can be run locally on a PC or Mac using a local LAMP stack (like XAMPP, WAMP or MAMP). Windows and Mac servers are NOT supported production environments, however. Please see the links at the bottom of this document for additional considerations when installing to your localhost.
Installing Magento
These instructions document the default installation for Magento. At the end, Magento will be installed without sample data to a directory called magento on your web server. There are four main steps covered here:
Step 1—Download Magento
Method 1: Download Magento to your computer and FTP it up to your server
- Using a browser, download the latest full release archive file from MagentoCommerce.com (http://www.magentocommerce.com/download)
- On your computer, extract Magento from the downloaded archive. A folder named magentocontaining all of the Magento files will be created
- Using an FTP client, upload the extracted magento folder and all its contents to the web root on your web server (usually public_html)
Method 2: Download Magento directly to your server (requires SSH access)
If you have SSH access to your server, using wget to download the archive directly to your server is much faster and simpler than Method 1.
- Using SSH, log onto your server and go to the web root directory (usually public_html)
- Get the full release archive using the wget command below
- On your server, extract Magento from the downloaded archive. A directory named magentocontaining all of the Magento files will be created under public_html
cd publc_html wgethttp://www.magentocommerce.com/downloads/assets/1.4.1.0/magento-1.4.1.0.tar.gz tar -zxvf magento-1.4.1.0.tar.gz
(Replace 1.4.1.0 in the commands above with the desired version number. Current and previous version numbers can be seen on the Download page on MagentoCommerce.com)
Step 2—Set file permissions for the Setup Wizard
On your web server, make the directories that the Setup Wizard needs writeable by the web server
Files & directories that must be writeable are:
- - file: magento/var/.htaccess
- - directory: magento/app/etc
- - directory: magento/var
- - all the directories under: magento/media
If you are using FTP, set the permissions of each to 777 or check read/write/execute for owner, user and group. If you are using SSH, use the following commands:
chmod o+w var var/.htaccess app/etc
chmod -R o+w media
Step 3—Create your store database
- Create an empty MySQL database for your store
This step varies by hosting provider and is out of the scope of this document. Consult your System Administrator or your web host’s support/documentation for instructions on how to do this. PHPmyAdmin or the MySQL command line are the most commonly used tools/methods for creating and managing a MySQL database - Create a database user with full privileges to the database
- Make note of the database name (dbname), db user (dbuser), db user password (dbpassword)
- If you want to load sample data, you must do it now, before you run the setup Wizard in the next step
Step 4—Run the web-based Setup Wizard
- Using a browser, run the Setup Wizard
Go to your website by domain or IP address (http://www.yourdomain.com/magento or http://yourip.0.0.1/magento) and the Setup Wizard will run automatically - In the Setup Wizard, finish configuring your Magento installation
a. License Agreement – Read and accept the terms and conditions
b. Localization (settings can be changed later via the Admin Panel)
- Locale – default country $ language
- Time zone – default time zone
- Default currency
c. Configuration
Database
- Host-localhostworks for most basic installations
- Database name-dbnameform when you created the database
- User name-dbuser from when you created the database
- User Password-dbpassform when you created the database
Web access options (will be pre-filled based on your installation, settings can be changed later via the Admin Panel)
- Base URL—for default installation into a magento directory, base URL should be http://www.yourdomain.com/magento or http://www.yourip.com/magento. (If you’re installing Magento locally on PC or Mac, this should be 127.0.0.1/magento–you cannot put “localhost” here unless you’ve previously set it up in your local hosts file.)
- Admin path—default is “admin” (will be appended to base URL to reach Admin Panel)
- Skip Base URL Validations Before the Next Step
- Use Web Server (Apache) Rewrites
- Use Secure URLs
Session Storage Options—Choose file system or database. Most installations should use “file system” because it’s faster and doesn’t cause the database to grow. But if your site will run on multiple servers, you should select “database” so that a user’s session data is available regardless of which server his/her request is served from.
Admin account
- Name & contact info for 1st Admin user
- Login info for 1st admin user (username & password)
- Encryption key—Database encryption key. If you do not provide one, Magento will automatically generate one. It will be displayed to you and saved in the app/etc/local.xml file.
Magento stores this set up information in the file app/etc/local.xml. If you’d like to run through the Setup Wizard again you do not have to download all the Magento files again. Just delete the local.xml file and any files and directories in the var/ directory and go back to http://www.yourdomain.com/magento with your browser. The Setup Wizard will run automatically again. (Why does this work? The Setup Wizard writes the values you provide during the setup process to the local.xml file and it will not run if it finds a local.xml file already. The var folder contains cached session information from the frontend and will have cached any previous settings, so deleting these files will prevent the incorrect cached content from being used.)
Success!
After you finish the set up wizard, you will be redirected to the Magento storefront. You can access the Admin Panel and start adding categories and products.
