How To Setup The Drupal Content Management System

The following step-by-step instructions will walk you through a successful Drupal installation and set-up for your own website on a remote server.

Prerequisites:

1. Registered URL (Uniform Resource Locator) name.

2. Web server for your website set-up with the proper requirements (see http://drupal.org/requirements).

3. A computer with access the Internet.

DRUPAL INSTALLATION:

1. Create a new database for Drupal.

2. Go to your web server's public folder.

3. If you have anything else in your public folder, you may choose to create an alternative folder and move anything into this folder so the rest of the Drupal installation will not over-write any files or folders you may have with the same name. I chose to name this folder "OLD".

4. Disable the register_globals PHP for your public folder (see: https://www2.suresupport.com/faq.php/14/229).

5. Download the most current release of Drupal (http://drupal.org/project/drupal) to you local computer. This will be a *.tar.gz file.

6. Upload the file to your public folder.

7. Unpack all the contents of the drupal-* (* = the version number) to the public folder.

8. Delete the *.tar.gz file.

9. From a web browser, go to http:// yoursite .com (yoursite .com = your URL).

10. Start and follow the on-screen instructions to set-up Drupal. You will need to know your database name and password (from step 1 above).

11. At the Configure site step, you will create an Administrator user name and password. I suggest to use the name "admin" and a password different than you will use for any user logins later on. When done, click the Save and Continue button at the bottom of the page. The page should refresh showing all green check marks.

12. Click on the message link "You may now visit your new site." where you will be logged in to your site as the Administrator.