Book Image

Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6

By : Leonard Murphy
Book Image

Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6

By: Leonard Murphy

Overview of this book

<p>ExpressionEngine is a flexible, feature-rich open-source content management system used by thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies to easily manage their websites. It is written in the world's most popular web scripting language, PHP, and built on the MySQL database server. This book is written for ExpressionEngine 1.6 users, although it will still be a good introduction for those using other versions.<br /><br />If you're eager to start creating websites with ExpressionEngine, this is your book. This book gives you clear, concise and, of course, practical guidance to take you from the basics of setting up ExpressionEngine to developing the skills you need to create professional ExpressionEngine websites to be reckoned with.<br /><br />This book will take you through the process of setting up a website with ExpressionEngine with the help of an example site. By creating a site for selling toast online, you will learn all the stages required for building a professional website in a plain, articulate manner.<br /><br />This book is aimed at beginners new to ExpressionEngine, but will allow readers to advance rapidly up the learning curve to the point where they can tackle any task with confidence.<br /><br />Once you're set up with a basic installation of ExpressionEngine, you will move on to learn about creating and managing your content, customizing the look of your site, managing users and groups, allowing visitors to post comments and feedback, building an events calendar, and building a photo gallery. The book also covers the discussion forum module, the simple commerce module, and the wiki module as well as basics such as creating search-engine friendly URLs, 404 "page not found" pages, removing the index.php file for cleaner URLs and updating ExpressionEngine to the latest version.</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Practical Data Analysis and Reporting with BIRT
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface

Appendix A. Installing XAMPP

In this appendix, we will walk through downloading, installing, and setting up the XAMPP package. XAMPP is a free package that includes an easy-to-set up web server (Apache), database server (MySQL), and server-side scripting language (PHP), all of which are requirements of ExpressionEngine. Installing XAMPP allows us to experiment with ExpressionEngine on our own computer before we change anything on a live website.

Setting up a local AMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP) environment has typically required configuring the different applications to work on their own, and then to work with each other. With XAMPP, this interplay has already been set up for you, and the system comes configured and ready to go, so we can concentrate our time on learning ExpressionEngine in a risk-free environment.

Note

We are installing XAMPP here as a 'development' or 'testing' environment only. We will only be using XAMPP for testing and exploring ExpressionEngine, and not as a 'production' environment for serving our website to the outside world. Setting up a production web server and a database server and securing and optimizing them is a topic beyond the scope of this text.

There is a version of the XAMPP package available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and the Solaris operating system. XAMPP is free to download, and the package contains the following:

  • The AMP environment of Apache, MySQL, and PHP needed to install ExpressionEngine.

  • The software phpMyAdmin, the leading web-based interface to MySQL, which is needed to manage the ExpressionEngine database.

XAMPP also comes with other features such as OpenSSL and FileZilla (an FTP server) that we do not take advantage of in this book, but that you may find useful.

Installing XAMPP

The installation walk-through in this chapter only covers Windows. If you find yourself in need of further help, check out the XAMPP documentation page at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/faq-xampp.html.

If you are running Mac OS X, you may prefer to check out MAMP at http://www.mamp.info/en/index.php as an alternative to XAMPP. This application creates an AMP environment just like XAMPP, but is exclusive to the Mac OS environment. The installation and configuration may be a little different, but the end result is an http://localhost environment that you can use to test ExpressionEngine. If you decide to use MAMP (or already have it installed), please skip to Setting Up the ExpressionEngine Database at the end of this appendix.

Download XAMPP

There are multiple ways to download XAMPP. There are four different packages as well as two add-ons:

  • XAMPP Basic Package

  • XAMPP Development Package

  • XAMPP Upgrade Package

  • Perl (add-on for XAMPP)

  • Tomcat (add-on for XAMPP)

  • XAMPP Lite

The packages can be downloaded in multiple ways, through:

  • Installer

  • ZIP Archive

  • Self-extracting ZIP archive

For the purposes of this appendix, we will be downloading the Installer version of the basic XAMPP package. We do not need the development package or the Perl or Tomcat add-ons. However, if you have a slower internet connection, or if you already have XAMPP installed, you may prefer to choose the Lite or the Upgrade package.

  1. 1. Visit http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html.

  2. 2. On that page, there will be a link to the XAMPP version for your particular operating system. We are going to select XAMPP for Windows.

  3. 3. Select the Installer version of XAMPP for Windows—it will most likely be one of the first options on the page.

  4. 4. Clicking the Installer link takes you to SourceForge where we can download the file. The file download should begin automatically, depending on the security features of your browser.

    Note

    If you have Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer may block the site from downloading files to your computer. A warning will appear in a small bar at the top of your browser screen—click on it and select Download File.

  5. 5. Finally, we will be prompted to save the file. Save it to your Desktop or My Documents area.

Depending on the speed of your internet connection, the file may take some time to download.

Install XAMPP

Now that we have downloaded the XAMPP file, the next step is to install it.

Note

If you are running the Skype VOIP application, or if you are running IIS Server, you will need to exit them before proceeding. Apache cannot start as a service if Skype or IIS is also running—though when XAMPP is not in use, you can exit XAMPP to use Skype or IIS.

  1. 1. Double-click on the file that we downloaded in order to run it.

  2. 2. Select the language you wish the installation process to use, and click Ok.

  3. 3. A welcome message will display. Click Next.

  4. 4. Next, we have to choose a place to install XAMPP. This book assumes that XAMPP is installed in c:\xampp. Choose a directory and select Next. Note that for Windows Vista, Apache Friends recommends not installing XAMPP into your c:\Program Files\ folder.

  5. 5. In the next screen, we are prompted to install Apache and MySQL as services. Doing this will save us from having to start XAMPP every time we switch on our computer (and will allow other applications you may have, such as Skype, to run simultaneously), so check those boxes (but do leave the FileZilla box unchecked). Then click Install.

  6. 6. XAMPP will then install. At one point, a command-line window will open; do not be alarmed—this is normal! After the installation is complete, we will get a message indicating so. Click Finish.

  7. 7. Next, we are prompted to start the XAMPP control panel, which can also be opened by selecting Start | All Programs | XAMPP | XAMPP Control Panel, or by running c:\xampp\xampp-control.exe. Select Yes.

We are now done with the installation.