| PHP-Nuke is a simple install, primarily because all of its prerequisite pieces aren't necessarily so simple. As this is not a book about Web servers, database servers, or operating systems, I'm not going to help you install those bits. If you're not feeling brave enough to try, you should reconsider that decision about hosting your Web site with someone who'll install PHP-Nuke for you. PHP-Nuke will run on any system that has the following components already installed: An operating system. This can be some flavor of Linux, Windows UNIX, or even Mac OS X. Heck, write your own operating system, if you want to. The choice of operating system makes no difference whatsoever in how PHP-Nuke operates. And by the way, lots of Linux- and UNIX- based systems (and this includes Mac OS X) come preinstalled with Apache, PHP, and MySQL, giving you all of your prerequisites right up front. Windows, sadly, comes with none of these, Microsoft having gone its own route for Web servers and stuff. A Web server. Apache is highly recommended because it works so well with the other bits of software you'll need. However, you can use Microsoft's IIS, if you want. Because of the way PHP is implemented under IIS, it might be a less than satisfying experience, which is why I recommend Apache. Apache runs fine on Windows, by the way, provided that you resolve any conflicts with IIS (which is easily done by uninstalling IIS). You can get Apache from www.apache.org, if you're so inclined. PHP version 4.2.x or later (version 5.0 is the most recent, as of this writing). You can get this from www.php.net. PHP must be installed as a module under Apache. Note that half the Apache installers you'll find will have PHP 4.2.x built right in, so you may not need to install PHP separately. A database server. MySQL is cheap (free) and easy to install, and can be downloaded from www.mysql.com. PHP-Nuke will also work with mSQL, PostgreSQL, PostgreSQL_local, ODBC-style databases, Sybase, and Interbase servers. I have no idea whether any of these are appreciably better than MySQL, which is the one I use and the one that PHP-Nuke is developed on and tested with.
As I mentioned, plenty of operating systems come with all of these things built right in. I have one of the flat-screen iMac computers running OS X 10.3, and it has PHP, Apache, and MySQL, all preinstalled and operating just fine. From the Fridge It's funny how you get hooked on a thing. I bought an iPod when they first came out because, well, 10GB of space for MP3s? How could you not buy one? The iMac came after a week of watching Microsoft Word crash on my PC; I loaded Microsoft Word X onto the Mac, and it never crashed. I wrote about six books on Microsoft server technologies on that Mac, which causes no end of amusement for the folks I know at Microsoft. When I realizedquite recently, in factthat the Mac was preloaded with all this Web server stuff, I went back to a PC for writing and started using the Mac as my little in-house Web server. I tried, by the way, getting Apache and PHP and MySQL all running on a Windows box. I'm apparently not smart enough to do so because it never all worked quite right. |
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