CONTENTS OF THIS FILE --------------------- * Requirements * Optional requirements * Installation * Drupal administration * Customizing your theme(s) * Multisite Configuration * More Information REQUIREMENTS ------------ Drupal requires a web server, PHP 4 (4.3.5 or greater) or PHP 5 (http://www.php.net/) and either MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/) or PostgreSQL (http://www.postgresql.org/). The Apache web server and MySQL database are recommended; other web server and database combinations such as IIS and PostgreSQL have been tested to a lesser extent. When using MySQL, version 4.1.1 or greater is recommended to assure you can safely transfer the database. For more detailed information about Drupal requirements, see "Requirements" (http://drupal.org/requirements) in the Drupal handbook. For detailed information on how to configure a test server environment using a variety of operating systems and web servers, see "Local server setup" (http://drupal.org/node/157602) in the Drupal handbook. OPTIONAL TASKS -------------- - To use XML-based services such as the Blogger API and RSS syndication, you will need PHP's XML extension. This extension is enabled by default. - To use Drupal's "Clean URLs" feature on an Apache web server, you will need the mod_rewrite module and the ability to use local .htaccess files. For Clean URLs support on IIS, see "Using Clean URLs with IIS" (http://drupal.org/node/3854) in the Drupal handbook. - Various Drupal features require that the web server process (for example, httpd) be able to initiate outbound connections. This is usually possible, but some hosting providers or server configurations forbid such connections. The features that depend on this functionality include the integrated "Update status" module (which downloads information about available updates of Drupal core and any installed contributed modules and themes), the ability to log in via OpenID, fetching aggregator feeds, or other network-dependent services. INSTALLATION ------------ 1. DOWNLOAD DRUPAL AND OPTIONALLY A TRANSLATION You can obtain the latest Drupal release from http://drupal.org/. The files are in .tar.gz format and can be extracted using most compression tools. On a typical Unix command line, use: wget http://drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-x.x.tar.gz tar -zxvf drupal-x.x.tar.gz This will create a new directory drupal-x.x/ containing all Drupal files and directories. Move the contents of that directory into a directory within your web server's document root or your public HTML directory: mv drupal-x.x/* drupal-x.x/.htaccess /var/www/html If you would like to have the default English interface translated to a different language, we have good news. You can install and use Drupal in other languages from the start. Check whether a released package of the language desired is available for this Drupal version at http://localize.drupal.org and download the package. Extract the contents to the same directory where you extracted Drupal into. 2. CREATE THE CONFIGURATION FILE AND GRANT WRITE PERMISSIONS Drupal comes with a default.settings.php file in the sites/default directory. The installer uses this file as a template to create your settings file using the details you provide through the install process. To avoid problems when upgrading, Drupal is not packaged with an actual settings file. You must create a file named settings.php. You may do so by making a copy of default.settings.php (or create an empty file with this name in the same directory). For example, (from the installation directory) make a copy of the default.settings.php file with the command: cp sites/default/default.settings.php sites/default/settings.php Next, give the web server write privileges to the sites/default/settings.php file with the command (from the installation directory): chmod o+w sites/default/settings.php So that the files directory can be created automatically, give the web server write privileges to the sites/default directory with the command (from the installation directory): chmod o+w sites/default 3. CREATE THE DRUPAL DATABASE Drupal requires access to a database in order to be installed. Your database user will need sufficient privileges to run Drupal. Additional information about privileges, and instructions to create a database using the command line are available in INSTALL.mysql.txt (for MySQL) or INSTALL.pgsql.txt (for PostgreSQL). To create a database using PHPMyAdmin or a web-based control panel consult the documentation or ask your webhost service provider. Take note of the username, password, database name and hostname as you create the database. You will enter these items in the install script. 4. RUN THE INSTALL SCRIPT To run the install script point your browser to the base URL of your website (e.g., http://www.example.com). You will be guided through several screens to set up the database, create tables, add the first user account and provide basic web site settings. The install script will attempt to create a files storage directory in the default location at sites/default/files (the location of the files directory may be changed after Drupal is installed). In some cases, you may need to create the directory and modify its permissions manually. Use the following commands (from the installation directory) to create the files directory and grant the web server write privileges to it: mkdir sites/default/files chmod o+w sites/default/files The install script will attempt to write-protect the settings.php file and the sites/default directory after saving your configuration. However, you may need to manually write-protect them using the commands (from the installation directory): chmod a-w sites/default/settings.php chmod a-w sites/default If you make manual changes to the file later, be sure to protect it again after making your modifications. Failure to remove write permissions to that file is a security risk. Although the default location for the settings.php file is at sites/default/settings.php, it may be in another location if you use the multi-site setup, as explained below. 5. CONFIGURE DRUPAL When the install script succeeds, you will be directed to the "Welcome" page, and you will be logged in as the administrator already. Proceed with the initial configuration steps suggested on the "Welcome" page. If the default Drupal theme is not displaying properly and links on the page result in "Page Not Found" errors, try manually setting the $base_url variable in the settings.php file if not already set. It's currently known that servers running FastCGI can run into problems if the $base_url variable is left commented out (see http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=19656). 6. REVIEW FILE SYSTEM STORAGE SETTINGS AND FILE PERMISSIONS The files directory created in step 4 is the default file system path used to store all uploaded files, as well as some temporary files created by Drupal. After installation, the settings for the file system path may be modified to store uploaded files in a different location. It is not necessary to modify this path, but you may wish to change it if: * your site runs multiple Drupal installations from a single codebase (modify the file system path of each installation to a different directory so that uploads do not overlap between installations); or, * your site runs a number of web server front-ends behind a load balancer or reverse proxy (modify the file system path on each server to point to a shared file repository). To modify the file system path: * Ensure that the new location for the path exists or create it if necessary. To create a new directory named uploads, for example, use the following command from a shell or system prompt (while in the installation directory): mkdir uploads * Ensure that the new location for the path is writable by the web server process. To grant write permissions for a directory named uploads, you may need to use the following command from a shell or system prompt (while in the installation directory): chmod o+w uploads * Access the file system path settings in Drupal by selecting these menu items from the Navigation menu: Administer > Site configuration > File system Enter the path to the new location (e.g.: uploads) at the File System Path prompt. Changing the file system path after files have been uploaded may cause unexpected problems on an existing site. If you modify the file system path on an existing site, remember to copy all files from the original location to the new location. Some administrators suggest making the documentation files, especially CHANGELOG.txt, non-readable so that the exact version of Drupal you are running is slightly more difficult to determine. If you wish to implement this optional security measure, use the following command from a shell or system prompt (while in the installation directory): chmod a-r CHANGELOG.txt Note that the example only affects CHANGELOG.txt. To completely hide all documentation files from public view, repeat this command for each of the Drupal documentation files in the installation directory, substituting the name of each file for CHANGELOG.txt in the example. For more information on setting file permissions, see "Modifying Linux, Unix, and Mac file permissions" (http://drupal.org/node/202483) or "Modifying Windows file permissions" (http://drupal.org/node/202491) in the online handbook. 7. CRON MAINTENANCE TASKS Many Drupal modules have periodic tasks that must be triggered by a cron maintenance task, including search module (to build and update the index used for keyword searching), aggregator module (to retrieve feeds from other sites), ping module (to notify other sites about new or updated content), and system module (to perform routine maintenance and pruning on system tables). To activate these tasks, call the cron page by visiting http://www.example.com/cron.php, which, in turn, executes tasks on behalf of installed modules. Most systems support the crontab utility for scheduling tasks like this. The following example crontab line will activate the cron tasks automatically on the hour: 0 * * * * wget -O - -q -t 1 http://www.example.com/cron.php More information about cron maintenance tasks are available in the help pages and in Drupal's online handbook at http://drupal.org/cron. Example scripts can be found in the scripts/ directory. DRUPAL ADMINISTRATION --------------------- A new installation of Drupal defaults to a very basic configuration with only a few active modules and minimal user access rights. Use your administration panel to enable and configure services. For example: General Settings Administer > Site configuration > Site information Enable Modules Administer > Site building > Modules Configure Themes Administer > Site building > Themes Set User Permissions Administer > User management > Permissions For more information on configuration options, read the instructions which accompany the different configuration settings and consult the various help pages available in the administration panel. Community-contributed modules and themes are available at http://drupal.org/. CUSTOMIZING YOUR THEME(S) ------------------------- Now that your installation is running, you will want to customize the look of your site. Several sample themes are included and more can be downloaded from drupal.org. Simple customization of your theme can be done using only CSS. Further changes require understanding the phptemplate engine that is part of Drupal. See http://drupal.org/handbook/customization to find out more. MULTISITE CONFIGURATION ----------------------- A single Drupal installation can host several Drupal-powered sites, each with its own individual configuration. Additional site configurations are created in subdirectories within the 'sites' directory. Each subdirectory must have a 'settings.php' file which specifies the configuration settings. The easiest way to create additional sites is to copy the 'default' directory and modify the 'settings.php' file as appropriate. The new directory name is constructed from the site's URL. The configuration for www.example.com could be in 'sites/example.com/settings.php' (note that 'www.' should be omitted if users can access your site at http://example.com/). Sites do not have to have a different domain. You can also use subdomains and subdirectories for Drupal sites. For example, example.com, sub.example.com, and sub.example.com/site3 can all be defined as independent Drupal sites. The setup for a configuration such as this would look like the following: sites/default/settings.php sites/example.com/settings.php sites/sub.example.com/settings.php sites/sub.example.com.site3/settings.php When searching for a site configuration (for example www.sub.example.com/site3), Drupal will search for configuration files in the following order, using the first configuration it finds: sites/www.sub.example.com.site3/settings.php sites/sub.example.com.site3/settings.php sites/example.com.site3/settings.php sites/www.sub.example.com/settings.php sites/sub.example.com/settings.php sites/example.com/settings.php sites/default/settings.php If you are installing on a non-standard port, the port number is treated as the deepest subdomain. For example: http://www.example.com:8080/ could be loaded from sites/8080.www.example.com/. The port number will be removed according to the pattern above if no port-specific configuration is found, just like a real subdomain. Each site configuration can have its own site-specific modules and themes in addition to those installed in the standard 'modules' and 'themes' directories. To use site-specific modules or themes, simply create a 'modules' or 'themes' directory within the site configuration directory. For example, if sub.example.com has a custom theme and a custom module that should not be accessible to other sites, the setup would look like this: sites/sub.example.com/: settings.php themes/custom_theme modules/custom_module NOTE: for more information about multiple virtual hosts or the configuration settings, consult the Drupal handbook at drupal.org. For more information on configuring Drupal's file system path in a multi-site configuration, see step 6 above. MORE INFORMATION ---------------- - For additional documentation, see the online Drupal handbook at http://drupal.org/handbook. - For a list of security announcements, see the "Security announcements" page at http://drupal.org/security (available as an RSS feed). This page also describes how to subscribe to these announcements via e-mail. - For information about the Drupal security process, or to find out how to report a potential security issue to the Drupal security team, see the "Security team" page at http://drupal.org/security-team. - For information about the wide range of available support options, see the "Support" page at http://drupal.org/support.