eZ Publish Tutorial and Installation How To

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

eZ Publish 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 eZ Publish at http://johnsmith.com/ezpublish/.

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 eZ Publish to use to store the information it needs.

   Create a database called 'ezpublish' with a user named 'ezpublish'. 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_ezpublish' and the username is the same 'johnsmit_ezpublish'.
2. Download the latest version of eZ Publish from the eZ Publish website and unzip the contents of the zip file to your desktop using http://winzip.com. You should now have a folder on your desktop with all the files and folders you need to install and run eZ Publish. Rename the 'ezpublish-3.3-4' file to 'ezpublish'.
3. Upload the 'ezpublish' 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.
4. Now we can access the eZ Publish install wizard. In this example, we'll point to 'http://www.johnsmith.com/ezpublish/index.php'. You should now be on the first page of the eZ Publish installation. You can choose to either finetune your system before installation or go to the next page and start the installation. Your screen should look like this:

   

   We're going to choose the finetune option, so click the 'Finetune' button to continue to the next page. You'll now get a list of results from different tests the script ran on the server. The only one that we have any control over are the file permissions. We need to change permissions on some of the folders so the script can write in these directories. You can do this using the CHMOD command in your FTP program. If you don't know how to do this, check out the FTP tutorials on our tutorials page. We're going to CHMOD the folders as follows:

   • CHMOD the 'settings' folder to 777.
   • CHMOD the 'settings/override' folder to 777.
   • CHMOD the 'var' folder to 777.
   • CHMOD the 'var/storage' folder to 777.
   • CHMOD the 'var/cache' folder to 777.
   • CHMOD the 'settings/siteaccess/admin' folder to 777.
   • CHMOD the 'design' folder to 777.

   Scroll down the page and check the 'Ignore this test' checkboxes for test 2 and test 3 because we don't have access to change these settings. Note: You should leave a ticket on the support desk asking to have the memory increased for your account so that the script will run smoothly. Click the 'Finetune' button at the bottom to run the tests again and see if we set the correct permissions for the folders.

   There should be a couple more tests that they mention but we don't have access to these settings either. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Scroll to the bottom and click the 'Next' button to continue. You should now be on the 'Outgoing E-mail' page. You can leave the email setting to 'sendmail'. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Next' button to continue. You should now be on the 'Database initialization' page. You need to enter the information for the database you created in step #1. For this example, we'll enter the following information:

   • Type MySQL - Stays the same.
   • Servername: localhost - Stays the same.
   • Username: johnsmit_ezpublish
   • Password: mypassword

   You can leave the 'Socket' field blank. your screen should look like this:

   

   Click on the 'Next' button to save the database information. You should now be on the 'Language options' page. Choose your preferred language. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Next' button to continue. You should now be on the 'Site packages' page. Choose which site you would like to base your design on. If you wish to start from scratch choose the 'Plain' option. For this example, we're going to choose the 'Corporate' option. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Next' button to continue. You should now be on the 'Site access' page. Leave the default setting selected. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Next' button to continue. You should now be on the 'Site details' page. You can leave all of the values as is, or change them according to your preference. You should leave the 'Site URL' field as is. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Next' button to continue. You should now be on the 'Site security' page. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Since you don't have shell access and since you've already uploaded the '.htaccess_root' file, you can use your FTP program to rename this file to '.htaccess'. If you don't know how to do this, check out the FTP tutorials page on our tutorials page. Click the 'Next' button to continue. You should now be on the 'Registration' page. You can choose to send in the registration if you would like. For this example, we're not going to so we've unchecked the checkbox at the bottom. Your screen should look like this:

   

   Click the 'Next' button to continue. Your eZ Publish installation is now finished. Make note of the information listed. It will show the password for each site you've checked on the 'Site packages' page. Your screen should look like this:

   

   You can now either access the 'User site' or the 'Admin site'. The eZ Publish tutorial is now complete.

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

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