All Done?

Yep, that's the installation. Now you're ready to start configuring whatever bits of PHP-Nuke you want. I recommend you start with Topic 6, "Configuring Site Preferences," which covers the most critical configuration items for a new site, but after that, you're on your own. Decide what parts of your new Web site interest you the most, and start therejust look for the appropriate topic, and I'll walk you through it.

By the way, if your Web-hosting company installed PHP-Nuke for you, that doesn't mean you can't install the latest version of PHP-Nuke right now. Topic 66, "Upgrading PHP-Nuke," covers upgrades, which are a bit simpler than fresh installations. Make sure you have your super admin account in place before proceeding with the upgrade.

UNDER THE HOOD

Boy, this confused me when I started using PHP-Nuke: It keeps a separate list of admins (which are also called Authors) and regular users. You'll probably have one of each on your site. If you log onto your site and don't see an Administration link somewhere on the left or right side, go directly to the admin.php page of your site (type it in your browser's URL line) and log in using your admin credentials, not your regular user credentials.

Sidebar . FAQ

How do I install Apache/Linux/MySQL/PHP?

No, you're not tricking me into answering that one. Seriously, those are complex topics, and entire books have been written on them! For Apache installation information, go to www.apache.org. For MySQL, check out www.mysql.org. For PHP, you can visit www.php.net. For Linux, you'll need to check out the instructions specific to your "build" or "distribution" of Linux; they're all different. But you dang well need to make sure all of these are installed and working before installing PHP-Nuke!!

I installed PHP-Nuke, and all I get is blank pages.

I'll guess that you didn't install PHP, or you didn't configure Apache to use PHP. You'll need to do that, and the PHP installation documentation tells you how. Find it at www.php.net.

I'm getting database error messages! What do I do?

First, make sure your PHP-Nuke config.php file has the correct information for connecting to your database. Also make sure the PHP-Nuke installation pages were run correctly to set up your database. If those pages displayed any errors, those errors have to be addressedyou can't just ignore them, unfortunately. Don't I wish! Sometimes errors occur because you don't have permissions to create a new database (for example); that's something you'll have to work out among you, your operating system, and your MySQL installation. Check the MySQL docs for details. If you're using a hosted service that includes MySQL, talk to your hosting provider: Sometimes they need to create databases for you, rather than letting you do it yourself.