You must install Magento on a web server. There are many kinds of web servers, but Magento is designed to run best in a LAMP environment: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It will run on Windows instead of Linux, but with some known issues that the official Magento site discusses. There are many low-cost hosting services that offer all the requirements for a successful Magento installation. Therefore, there is almost no excuse to settle for a service that is missing any of the requirements.

Determining which PHP version and extensions your web server has

You can see your server's PHP information by uploading and displaying a web page that has the phpinfo function.

Create a web page that has just these lines in it, and nothing else:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Save the file using any name you want, as long as it ends with .php, for example phpinfo.php.

Point your browser to the page you just created. For example, I pointed my browser to http://www.brew-me-a-cup.com/phpinfo.php. The page will look like the following screenshot:

As you scroll down the page, you will see the names of the PHP extensions that have been installed. For example, as you scroll down you will see a section for the DOM extension, which confirms that this extension is installed and working.

Keep scrolling until you find all the extensions listed in the table of the previous screenshot. Conversely, you can also scroll down to verify that an extension has not been installed on the server. To make it easier to find the extensions, you can search the page for their names. In Firefox, you can use Edit | Find, and in Internet Explorer you can use Edit | Find on This Page.

After you confirm that your web host meets the requirements for Magento, you are ready to install the software. The major steps for installing Magento are listed as follows:

After that, you're ready to start with creating your online store! Each of these major steps is covered in the subsections that follow.

In this section we will download and decompress the Magento files.

I chose to download the .zip file because Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista have built-in support for opening compressed .zip archives. Also, many Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, have built-in support for .zip archives.

The next step is to decompress the .zip archive. In Windows, you can right-click on the file and select Extract All, as shown in the following screenshot:

On Mac OS X, you can right-click or Control-click on the file and select Open With | Archive Utility like this:

The result should be a folder on your local hard drive called magento, with subfolders that you will upload:

In the next step you will upload these folders to your site. But before you do that, let me explain why you decompressed the Magento archive on your local hard drive.

Many web hosts enable you to decompress a ZIP file that you upload to the host. For example, using the popular Control Panel software, I uploaded the Magento ZIP file to a web host.

I then selected the .zip file.

The host then offered to unzip the file for me. This capability is a part of most web hosting services.

The result is a subdirectory on my web site called magento, with all of the Magento files placed inside.

Again, it unzipped the files into a subdirectory, not the root directory of my web site. That meant when customers access my storefront, they would go to http://williamrice.com/magento. However, I want my customers to simply go to http://williamrice.com.

To do this, I would need to unzip the files on my local computer and upload them, so that I can control which directory they appear in. I don't want the ZIP file to create a subdirectory for Magento. Instead, I want to place the Magento files in the root directory of my site. That's why I unzip the file on my local computer and upload the individual files to my site.

I am assuming that you are installing Magento on a Linux host because that is the recommended method. On a Linux host, every directory and file has a set of permissions. In the next three subsections, let's go over the basics of file permissions in Linux. Then, we will set the correct file permissions for our Magento files.

About owners and groups

A Linux web host almost always has multiple users. This is called a shared host because users share the computer's resources.

Every user will belong to one or more group(s). A group enables the administrator of that computer to manage a group of users at once. For example, suppose all customers using the computer as a web server are in a group called Webusers. Also, suppose the company that owns the server decides to increase the amount of space they give to each of their customers. Then, the administrator of the computer can increase the space for all the customers at once, just by increasing the space for the group Webusers. As a customer of a shared hosting service, you will be in a user group.

On a Linux host, every file and directory has an owner. The owner is one of the users on that computer. For example, you are the owner of the files that you upload to the host. Every file also belongs to a group. In the following screenshot, you can see that brewmaster is the owner of all files and directories that were uploaded to the store's directory. You can also see that all of the files and directories belong to a group called pg1404808. The name of that group doesn't mean anything to you as a user. It was assigned by the hosting service.

In the previous screenshot, you may have noticed the column labeled Rights. This column tells you what the user, group, and other users on the server are allowed to do with a file. For example, look at the directory 404. Notice that there are nine characters in the Rights column for that directory: rwxr-xr-x. The first three characters tell you what the owner is allowed to do with this directory or file. The next three tell you what the group is allowed to do. The last three tell you what other users on this server are allowed to do with the directory or file. So, the rights can be broken down like this:

owner: rwx, group: r-x, and other users: r-x

The rwx tells you that the owner of this directory, brewmaster, is allowed to read, write, and execute this directory. After that, the r-x tells you that the group to which this file belongs, pg1404808, is allowed to read and execute this directory. However, the group cannot write this directory, which means it cannot edit, rename, or delete it. Lastly, the second r-x tells you that other users on this computer can also read and execute the directory.

Using numbers (octals) to state permissions

As you saw, you can use a series of nine letters to express the rights that a directory or file has. The example we used was the directory 404, which has the rights rwxr-xr-x. You can also express the rights for a file or directory using a three-digit number. In the following screenshot, look at the field labelled Octal and note the number 755 in that field:

When you set permissions for a file, you will use your FTP application or web host's control panel to specify those permissions. In this case, you can see that the FTP application I use, WinSCP, enables me to state the file permissions as either letters (rwxr-xr-x), or as a number (755). Not every application gives you both options. Some applications force you to specify file permissions using letters, while others force you to use a number. Therefore, you should know how to express file permissions using both.

Let's look at this example again. We can see that the file permissions rwxr-xr-x are equivalent to the file permissions 755. So, we can deduce the following:

rwx = 7

r-x = 5

Here is the complete list of permissions expressed in both letters and numbers. Remember that the permissions for a file or directory will consist of three sets of these rights—one for the owner, one for the group, and one for all other users:

Letters	Number	Meaning
- - x	1	The user can execute the file, but cannot read or write it
- w -	2	The user can write (change, rename, and delete) the file, but cannot read or execute it
- w x	3	The user can write and execute the file, but cannot read it
r - -	4	The user can only read the file
r x	5	The user can read and execute the file, but cannot write (change, rename, and delete) it
r w -	6	The user can read and write the file, but cannot execute it
r w x	7	The user can do anything with the file

In the following screenshot, I am setting the permissions for the file index.html on my web site. I am using the web-based control panel provided by my hosting service. Notice that I must specify the permissions using numbers. Also, notice that this control panel allows me to choose only some permissions. For example, they do not allow the permission 777, which would allow anyone who gains access to the host complete control of that file.

Now that you have learned a little about file permissions on a Linux server, you know that:

• A Linux host usually has many users

• Every file and directory has an owner and belongs to a group

• For every file and directory, there is a set of permissions that specify what the owner, group, and all other users of that server can do with the file or directory

• You are concerned mostly with what an owner and all others can do with a file

• The permissions for a file or directory can be expressed as nine letters (three groups of three), or as three digits

• You will use your FTP application, or the web-based control panel provided by your hosting service, to set file and directory permissions

Let's move on and set the proper permissions for Magento's files and directories.

In this step, we will create a MySQL database where Magento will store the information that you add about your products, transactions, and customer information. We will also create a username and password for that database. Later, we will enter the database's name, location, username, and password into Magento. This will enable Magento to connect to that database.

The process for creating a database and user varies by the hosting service. I will show a method that is common to many hosting services. However, you should always check with your hosting service before proceeding with this step.

Using cPanel to create a database and a database user

1. Like many hosting services, the one I use for this demonstration offers the cPanel control panel. cPanel is web-based, so you don't need to install anything on your computer to use it. Using your web browser, you just log into your hosting service using the username and password they provide to you.

2. From the cPanel Home Page, I select MySQL Databases.

   

3. Then, I enter the name of the database and click on the Create button.

   

4. The previous screenshot contains some very important information that I will need later.

5. For Magento to connect to this database, it must know:

   • Where to find the MySQL host

   • The name of the database

   • The username and password of a user who has access to that database

6. Notice the name of the MySQL host, localhost:/tmp/mysql5.sock. This is where an application that is located on the same server will find the MySQL host. It is one of the parameters that I will enter into Magento. I will also need the name of the database—in this case, magento.

7. Now, I will create a user for this database. I've selected magento as the username, and I will give that user all privileges on that database:

   

8. Using cPanel, this is all I need to create a database and a database user for Magento.

Using DreamHost to create a database and a database user

1. I will also demonstrate creating a database and a database user on a hosting service that does not use cPanel. This demonstration is done on http://www.dreamhost.com/. This is not an endorsement of their hosting service. I chose them for this demonstration because their process is different from most, and thus offers a different perspective on this task. You will see that even though the keystrokes and clicks are very different, the basic principles are the same.

2. On the previous hosting service, the MySQL host name was assigned by the hosting service. On DreamHost, I create a MySQL host name. See the field New Hostname in the following screenshot:

1. In this case, I called the MySQL host mysql. I must create the MySQL host on a domain that I own, and so I used brew-me-a-cup.com. The result is that when I enter the database host name into Magento, I will enter mysql.brew-me-a-cup.com.

2. I also specify the database name, user, and password in this screen. That part is the same as the previous hosting service.

3. Here is the confirmation message for creating this database:

   

Localhost

1. If you are installing Magento on a localhost, you can probably use phpMyAdmin to create the database and user. For example, XAMPP and WAMP both include phpMyAdmin in their products. This process is well-documented at many web sites.

Perform the following check before proceeding to the next chapter:

If all of your answers are "Yes," then you're ready to install.

The hosting requirements for Magento can be met by many hosting services. Be choosy. Pick one that offers all of the requirements, is reliable, and gives you the ability to set the file permissions that you need. The Magento message board is a good place to ask other users about their experiences with hosting services.

In this chapter, we examined the process for installing Magento. We prepared our hosting environment, uploaded Magento, and stepped through the installer. You might want to try this on your local computer (localhost) before trying it on a hosting service. Doing this enables you to experiment with your store, and learn Magento without the fear of ruining your store.