Nucleus Tutorial and Installation How To

This tutorial describes how to use the Nucleus weblog software with your NEXCESS.NET web hosting account. NEXCESS.NET specializes in hosting Nucleus blogs and this tutorial is meant to help you quickly setup your site with our web hosting service.

Nucleus is open source, meaning that you can use and distribute it as you'd like as long as you don't change it.

For the sake of this tutorial we'll assume that you own the domain 'johnsmith.com' and are setting up Nucleus at http://johnsmith.com/nucleus/.

Follow these steps to complete the tutorial:

1. The first thing to do is to run through the SiteWorx MySQL tutorial and create a database for Nucleus to use to store the information it needs.

   Create a database called 'nucleus' with a user named 'nucleus'. When you do this SiteWorx will prefix the database and user names with some text resembling your domain name.

   With our example domain of 'johnsmith.com' the database name is 'johnsmit_nucleus' and the username is the same 'johnsmit_nucleus'.
2. Download the latest version of Nucleus from the Nucleus website and unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop using http://winzip.com.

   You should now have a folder which contains all the files and folders you need to install and run Nucleus. Rename the 'nucleus2.5beta' folder to 'nucleus'.

3. Upload the 'nucleus' folder to your web hosting account. You should do this using an FTP Program. If you need help with FTPing files, you can check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page.

   Once the Nucleus files are finished uploading, we need to change the permissions on the 'config.php' file in order to give the script access to it. You can do this using the CHMOD function of your FTP program. If you don't know how to do this, check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page. In this example, we're going to CHMOD the 'config.php' file to 666.

4. Now we can access the installer. In this example, we'll point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/nucleus/install.php'. Scroll down to the 'MySQL Login Data' section. You need to enter the information for your database that you created in step #1. In this example, we're going to enter the information as follows:
   • Hostname: localhost
   • Username: johnsmit_nucleus
   • Password: mypassword
   • Database: johnsmit_nucleus - Make sure you leave the 'needs to be created' checkbox unchecked because we created this database in step #1

   You can leave the 'Use table prefix' checkbox unchecked and the field empty. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Scroll down to the 'Directories and URLs' section. All of the directories and path should be set to the correct urls and paths. Look over them to make sure. In this example, your screen should look like this:

   

   Scroll down to the last two sections. Enter information to create an admin account. You'll use this account to manage your weblog. The last section can be changed according to your preference or left as it is. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click on the 'Install Nucleus' button to continue.
5. The basic Nucleus installation is now complete. You should delete the 'install.php' and 'install.sql' files for security purposes. You should also CHMOD the 'config.php' file to 644. You can do this using your FTP program. If you don't know how to do this, check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click on the 'Login to the admin area to configure your site' link to access the admin control panel. You're now on the login page. Enter the username and password you created for your admin account. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click on the 'Log in' button to access the control panel. Your Nucleus installation is finished. You can now configure your blog according to your preferences. The Nucleus tutorial is now complete. Your screen should look like this:

   

   For more information on how to use Nucleus once it's installed, check out the Nucleus Documentation.

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