Getting Started - PHP

The first order of business is - obviously - to download and install PHP-Nuke. You can download a copy from http://www.phpnuke.org/, the official site; since this site itself runs on PHP-Nuke, this is also an opportunity to see the features available first-hand. A couple of different versions are available - I'll be using version 4.4.1a throughout this article, although you should also take a look at version 5.0 (in beta at the time of writing).

PHP-Nuke requires a Web server running PHP, and a mySQL database server; I've tested it on both Windows and Linux, and it works fine on both operating systems. If you've got these pre-requisites, unpack the distribution into a directory off your Web server root (say, "/nuke/"), and create a new mySQL database to hold your PHP-Nuke data (say, "nuke").

mysql> CREATE DATABASE nuke;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Once the database has been created, you can import the default database schema from the included SQL file, "nuke.sql".

$ mysql -D nuke -u root -p < nuke.sql

Next, you need to update the system configuration to reflect the database, username and password. These variables can be found in the "config.php" global configuration file in PHP-Nuke's "html/" directory; update them to reflect your system configuration.

$dbhost = "localhost";
$dbuname = "root";
$dbpass = "hf843i2";
$dbname = "nuke";

You may also have to specify a "theme" for PHP-Nuke (more on this later). The default theme is OpenMind, but if your distribution of PHP-Nuke doesn't include this theme (mine didn't), peek in the "themes/" directory, pick a theme and let "config.php" know.

$Default_Theme = "Sunset";

At this point, the system is ready to go - point your browser to the location where you installed the files (say, "http://localhost/nuke/html/"), and you should see something like this.



This is the default configuration and layout - but it's by no means cast in stone. PHP-Nuke offers extensive customization options, allowing you to alter every aspect of the default GUI. In order to illustrate, point your browser to the administration section (say, "http://localhost/nuke/html/admin.php") and log in as user "God", password "Password".

This article copyright Melonfire 2001. All rights reserved.

>>> More PHP Articles          >>> More By icarus, (c) Melonfire

blog comments powered by Disqus