Beginning Drupal 8
Todd Tomlinson - Beginning Drupal 8 (The Expert's Voice in Drupal) - 2015
Todd Tomlinson - Beginning Drupal 8 (The Expert's Voice in Drupal) - 2015
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Appendix A ■ Installing <strong>Drupal</strong><br />
Setting Up your Platform in Preparation for <strong>Drupal</strong><br />
Before you install <strong>Drupal</strong>, you need three basic components in place: the platform itself (hardware and<br />
operating system), a web server (the software, such as Apache), and a database server (such as MySQL).<br />
If you are building your site on a commercial hosting company’s platform, you can skip to the “Installing<br />
<strong>Drupal</strong>” section, as everything you need is typically installed by default.<br />
Depending on the operating system on your platform, you may already have a few of the required<br />
components installed (for example, OS X comes with Apache and PHP already installed). However, getting<br />
all of the components to work together may be more of a challenge than most people want to undertake.<br />
Fortunately, a group of very talented people at www.apachefriends.org created an “all-in-one” software<br />
package called XAMPP (XAMPP stands for Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Python) that is very simple for even<br />
the least technical person to install and configure. There is an XAMPP distribution for Windows, OS X, Linux,<br />
and Solaris.<br />
The components included in XAMPP that are critical for <strong>Drupal</strong> are<br />
268<br />
• Apache: The web server software package that handles requests for content residing<br />
on your server and returns the results to whoever made the requests.<br />
• MySQL: The relational database where <strong>Drupal</strong> stores all of its content.<br />
• PHP & PEAR: PHP, the programming language used by the developers who created<br />
and maintain <strong>Drupal</strong>, and PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository), a<br />
structured library of open-source code for PHP developers.<br />
• PHPMyAdmin: An invaluable tool for creating and managing databases, tables, and<br />
data stored in your MySQL database.<br />
There are detailed instructions for installing XAMPP on each of the supported platforms on the<br />
www.apachefriends.org website. There are alternatives to XAMPP, such as MAMP for OS X. For a list of<br />
alternatives, conduct a Google search for “Apache AND MySQL AND PHP stacks.”<br />
Installing <strong>Drupal</strong><br />
Now that you have the underlying server components installed, you are ready to install <strong>Drupal</strong>. There are<br />
eight basic steps associated with installing <strong>Drupal</strong> on your server, regardless of whether you are running<br />
your <strong>Drupal</strong> site on a Windows, OS X, Linux, or shared-hosting-based server.<br />
1. Download the current <strong>Drupal</strong> 8 installation package from http://drupal.org/<br />
project/drupal to your computer.<br />
2. Decompress the <strong>Drupal</strong> installation tar.gz or zip file.<br />
3. Move the files from within the expanded installation file to your web server’s<br />
root directory, or to a subdirectory if you wish to run more than one site on your<br />
server (e.g., www-root/drupal8 or htdocs/drupal8).<br />
4. Create the settings.php file.<br />
5. Create the files directory.<br />
6. Create the database that you will be using for your new <strong>Drupal</strong> website.<br />
7. Create the database user account.<br />
8. Launch the <strong>Drupal</strong> installation script and configure your site.<br />
These steps are described in more detail in the sections that follow.