First of all, gather the details required for the installation of CMS Made Simple. You will need to know the following:
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Data |
Your value |
|---|---|
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Domain (website address) |
|
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FTP host | |
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FTP user | |
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FTP password | |
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Database host address | |
|
Database port (optional) | |
|
Database name* | |
|
Database username | |
*You have to create an empty database before you start the installation. It depends on your hosting as to how the new database can be created. Generally, a database can be created in the admin panel of your web hosting. Ask your provider for help if you face any difficulties.
All the information listed in the table should be available before you start the installation. Missing any of this information will make the installation of CMS Made Simple impossible. The information requested can be obtained from your hosting's support. Figure out and write down all the required access data now. You will need it during the setup and configuration process.
To start with the setup of CMS Made Simple on your web hosting, your domain should be registered and connected. Test it now. Open your browser, and give your domain name in the address bar. OK? If not, your domain provider will help you to solve any issues.
You can use any browser to manage CMS Made Simple, except Internet Explorer 6. This browser is pretty old. It was released in August, 2001 and does not meet the requirements of the modern Internet. Nevertheless, visitors of your website who use Internet Explorer 6 will not have any difficulties viewing your pages. This restriction is valid only for you as the webmaster of the website.
You will need FTP access to your website. This kind of access is available on almost every web hosting. With the FTP connection data (see the previous table), you can connect to the hosting and upload all files that are required for installing and running CMS Made Simple.
There are many free FTP browsers that you can use. If you do not have an FTP browser, then I recommend the open source software FileZilla that is distributed free of charge on http://filezilla-project.org/. Download and install FileZilla right now.
A file archiver is a program that you can use to extract the files of CMS Made Simple onto your local disk. As the files of CMS Made Simple are distributed as archives, the program should be able to handle tar.gz files. If you do not have a file archiver, then you can use the open source application 7-Zip that can be freely downloaded from http://www.7-zip.org.
Now that we have all the access information and required software, we can start with the installation.
The CMS Made Simple files can be downloaded from the official website of CMS Made Simple. Open http://cmsmadesimple.org, and click on Downloads | CMSMS Releases in the top main navigation. You will see the list of files that are available for download, but you do not need all of them.
For every release, there is a bunch of files. The newest release is placed at the very top of the list. There are two different versions of CMS Made Simple—full version and base version. There is no difference in the functionality or features, just in the included languages. The base version includes only English for the administration console of CMS Made Simple, whereas the full version includes all translations of the admin console (over twenty languages). So, when you need only the English language in the administration console of your website, you can take the base version. It is a bit smaller than the full version.
Find the file named cmsmadesimple-X.X.X-full.tar.gz or cmsmadesimple-X.X.X-base.tar.gz (depending on the version you need). Here, X.X.X stands for the number of the release. For example, for release 1.6.6 (displayed in the last screenshot), you will have to download the file cmsmadesimple-1.6.6-full.tar.gz or cmsmadesimple-1.6.6-base.tar.gz.
Click on the file to save it to your local disk. Then, using 7-Zip or any other file archiver of your choice, extract it onto your local disk, so that you can see what is inside. To extract using 7-Zip, right-click on the file, and select 7-Zip | Extract Here, as shown in the following screenshot:
This will create a new file called cmsmadesimple.1.6.6-full.tar. The numbers in the filename depends on the version and release number of CMS Made Simple that you have downloaded. Right-click on this new file again, and select 7-Zip | Extract to "cmsmadesimple-1.6.6-full\", as shown in the next screenshot:
This action will create a new folder called cmsmadesimple-1.6.6-full on your local disk (or similar depending on the version and release number). This folder contains all files that you need to install CMS Made Simple. You have to upload them to your web space now.
Open FileZilla or an FTP browser of your choice. You have to connect to your web hosting to upload the files. In FileZilla, click on File | Site Manager. In Site Manager, click the New Site button. You should see a dialog window, as shown in the following screenshot:
Enter your FTP host in the field Host on the right-hand side. Then click on the field Logontype and select Normal from the list. Now, you can enter your FTP User and FTP Password in the respective fields below. Your FTP login details should have been provided by your hosting company. Contact your hosting company's support if you encounter any issues. Click on Connect. The connection should be established, and you will see a screen similar to the following:
On the left-hand side of the screen, you can see your local disk. Navigate to the folder where you have extracted the installation files of CMS Made Simple. On the right-hand side, you see the remote folder of your web hosting.
You have to upload all files and folders from the local disk with exactly the same folder structure to the root or to a subdirectory on the web space. Your root directory can be public_html (or wwwroot or htdocs), please ask your provider if you are not sure where to upload the files. Locating the files in the root directory will make your site available to the users at
http://www.yourdomain.com. If you create a subdirectory below the root directory, for example, public_html/somename, then your website will be available only in the subdirectory as http://www.yourdomain.com/somename. I recommend uploading the files to the root directory, unless you have already installed other applications there.
To upload all folders and files of CMS Made Simple, select everything on the left-hand (local) side, right-click, and select Upload.
Depending on your connection, it may take more than fifteen minutes to upload the files. As the FTP browser creates some connections to the server, it may happen that some files are already being copied with other connections. In this case, you will see a window similar to the following:
Choose Overwrite as the action, and check the box Always use this action. Wait until all the files have been transferred to the web space and until the upload is complete.
When the transfer is complete, you can start with the step-by-step installation program of CMS Made Simple. You start the installation process for CMS Made Simple in the browser by typing http://www.yourdomain.com in the address bar (you use your own domain name). If you do not see any installation screen, then you have uploaded the files into the wrong folder on your web space. Ask your provider where the files should be located.