Preparing to Install

Preparing to Install with Joe Shindelar This tutorial covers how to choose a method for installing the core software and satisfying prerequisites for installation. By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to choose and appropriate way to install the core software and handle any required prerequisites. Before you get started with this tutorial, you'll want to make sure that you understand the system requirements that must be met in order to host a Drupal site. And if you want to use Drush to install the core software, Drush must be installed already. The first thing you need to do is choose a method for installing the software. The fastest and easiest option is to use an online provider to get a demo installation of the software. This method is especially useful for evaluation purposes. Check out drupal.org/try-drupal. Another option is to use a one-click installer from your hosting provider. If you choose to install the software at your hosting provider, your hosting provider may have specific documentation and or a one-click install that you can use. You can check out a list of hosting providers that support Drupal on drupal.org. You can use Drush to install Drupal via the command line. You'll need to have Drush installed, and command line access to the site. You can use the web installer. You will need space on a local or hosted web server to install the core software manually. Finally, you could use a preconfigured environment or virtual machine that contains Drupal and all the required supporting software to install Drupal locally. See the section for your operating system under drupal.org's local server setup guide, for possible options. Links with more information about each option are included in the written version of this tutorial. If you're installing using Drush or the web installer, set up a URL and hosting for your site, either at an external hosting provider or on your own computer. You can verify that the hosting is working by putting a simple HTML file in the web root directory of the hosting and visiting the URL for your site. Additionally, you'll need to create a database for Drupal to use, along with the database user account with full access. If you don't know how to do this, consult your hosting provider or the install.mysql.txt file that comes with the core software. In my case, I'm using MAMP on my local host. I've got a web accessible directory with a simple HTML file and I can confirm it's working. I've also located my database credentials and created a new empty mySQL database named user_guide_videos where I can install the software. To demonstrate that my hosting is currently working, I've created this test.html file inside of a web accessible directory. And if I open that URL in my browser I can confirm that I'm seeing the text that's inside of the test file. Great. If you're installing using Drush, you can use the download and site install commands. First type drush dl, short for pm-download, drupal and we're going to use the drupal project rename flag here, so, --drupal -project-rename= and we'll call it docroot. What this will do is inform Drush that I would like to have the files downloaded into a directory named docroot. I'll go ahead and run this command. Once that's completed, I can confirm that it worked. I've got my docroot directory and if I change into that you can see that it contains all of the files for Drupal core. Alternatively, if you're installing using the web installer, upload the core software files manually. You can do this using Git and or Composer as well. See the tutorial on using Composer and Git to download files. We're going to do this by downloading a zipped archive file from drupal.org. Start by going to drupal.org and then click on the Download & Extend link, in the top-level menu. Then click the Download Drupal button and then choose whether you'd like to download the tar.gz or the .zip file. In this case I'll download the .gz file. Once the file has been downloaded, I can extract it. And then move the contents, the entire directory into a web accessible directory in my hosting provider. And copy that here. I can then delete the compressed file from earlier. I no longer need that. And I can rename the directory in my web accessible directory in my hosting provider to docroot once again. With these files in place, you're now ready to run the installer. In this tutorial, we looked at getting things set up for installing Drupal. Including reviewing options for hosting a Drupal site, making sure that we have a hosting environment that works and a database to use with Drupal, and then downloading the core files either directly from drupal.org or using Drush. And then placing them into a web accessible directory. You're now ready to start the process of installing the software.