Install Drupal with XAMPP in Ubuntu

Overview

Are you ready to build your very own website? It’s not as hard as you may think! A computer with an internet connection is all that’s required. Oh, and not to mention a healthy dose of patience!

This is a straightforward tutorial/guide which walks you through the entire process: installation and set-up, content management and basic configurations. Okay, enough chit-chat, let’s begin!

Obtaining the Tools

The softwares you’re going to be using are all free, open source and available online:

• Drupal is a web content management system (WCMS). Basically, it’s an application which facilitates the creation of web contents (blogs, forums, polls, etc.), manages/controls the contents, usually by a point-and-click work-flow. Best of all, Drupal requires little or no programming skills.

Drupal 6.12 Download – http://drupal.org/project/drupal

• XAMPP (cross-platform, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl) is a web server application packaged with Apache HTML web server, MySQL (database management), PHP (a scripting language) and Perl (a programming language.)

XAMPP for Linux Download – http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html

Pre-Installation

By now, you should have already downloaded the following files:

1. xampp-linux-1.7.1.tar.gz
2. drupal-6.12.tar.gz

Note: Unless you know what you’re doing, it’s recommended that you’re using the same files to avoid any confusion. If, for example, when newer versions are released, simply type in the correct file name when installing in the “Install XAMPP” and “Install Drupal” sections.

Now, this tutorial is done on a Linux system (Ubuntu), not Windows. Remember earlier when I told you the tools I’d use are all free? Well, Ubuntu is an excellent alternative operating system to Windows! Give it a try, you may like it!

Install XAMPP

We install XAMPP by extracting its content to a folder named “opt”:

1. Locate the file xampp-linux-1.7.1.tar.gz you’ve just downloaded.
2. If it’s not on your Desktop, move the file there.
3. Open the Terminal, enter the following command:

sudo tar xvfz Desktop/xampp-linux-1.7.1.tar.gz -C /opt

Start XAMPP

You installed XAMPP in the previous section, now it’s time to start it:

1. Open the Terminal, enter the following command:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

You should see the following lines in the terminal if everything is done correctly:

XAMPP: Starting Apache with SSL (and PHP5)…
XAMPP: Starting MySQL…
XAMPP: Starting ProFTPD…
XAMPP for Linux started.

Test XAMPP

Okay, so how do you know if XAMPP is currently active?

1. Open your favourite web broswer.
2. Enter the following address:

http://localhost

This page should pop up:

Click the Status link to see what’s running:

Install Drupal

Let’s install Drupal by extracting its content to “opt/lampp/htdocs”:

1. Locate the file drupal-6.12.tar.gz.
2. If it’s not on your Desktop, move the file there.
3. Open the Terminal, enter the following command:

sudo tar xvfz Desktop/drupal-6.12.tar.gz -C /opt/lampp/htdocs

1. Let’s rename “drupal-6.12” folder to a cleaner name, “drupal”.
2. Enter the following command:

sudo mv /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal-6.12 /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal

Test Drupal

Okay, we can now verify whether Drupal has installed correctly:

1. Open your web broswer.
2. Enter the following address:

http://localhost/drupal

You should see this page:

Create a Database

In this section, we create a new database for Drupal to store data:

1. Open your web browser.
2. Enter the following address:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

1. In the Create new database text box, type in a name for your database (I named mine “creativebushido”.)
2. Click the Create button.

Configure Drupal

Having completed the installation of XAMPP, Drupal, and a brand spanking new database, we can finally go ahead and configure Drupal:

1. Open your web browser.
2. Enter the following address:

http://localhost/drupal

1. Click the Install Drupal in English link.
2. You will be likely to ecounter the following page:

Don’t fret! First, we make a copy of default.settings.php and rename it to settings.php.

1. Open the Terminal, enter the following command:

sudo cp /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal/sites/default/default.settings.php /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal/sites/default/settings.php

Next, we need to grant permissions to the settings.php file so that it’s writeable:

1. Enter the following command (press Enter after each line):

cd /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal/sites

sudo chmod a+w default

sudo chmod a+w default/settings.php

Finally, we need to increase our PHP memory limit from 8M to 16M.

1. Open the Terminal and type:

sudo nano /opt/lampp/etc/php.ini

Look for the memory_limit parameter and change the number 8 to 16.
Once you’ve changed it, exit the text editor by holding down Ctrl and press x. Type y to save the file.

Because you’ve just made changes to the PHP file, you need to restart XAMPP to update it:

1. Open the Terminal, enter the following command:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp stop

1. To start XAMPP again, enter the following command:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

That should have solved all the problems! Okay, now you should be able to see the Database configuration page in your browser:

Notice that I have entered a name for my database, the same name I’d used earlier. Make sure you do the same.

Once you clicked the Save and continue button on the Set up database page, you will be directed to the Configure site page, like the picture below:

For security purposes, it tells you to remove write permissions to the settings.php file. Let’s do that:

1. Open the Terminal, enter the following command:

sudo chmod a-w /opt/lampp/htdocs/drupal/sites/default/settings.php

Finally! You are now ready to enter some important informations for your new web site.

Fill out the the required information for the Site information and Administration account sections. Make sure you remember the username and password you’ve entered!

Once all the informations are filled out, click the Save and continue button.

Voila! Give yourself a pat on the back! You have just completed installing Drupal on your computer!

For now, you can begin building your site. Everything you’re doing right now is offline. Once you have everything to your liking, you can deploy the final product live online.

I hope this has been useful. If you have any technical issues, I strongly recommend that you make use of Drupal’s excellent Community web site!