Documentation | Advanced Web Content Management
SpryPanel Documentation -> 1.3. Installation

SpryPanel Documentation | 1.3. Installation

This page of the SpryPanel documentation will guide you through the SpryPanel installation process. SpryPanel has been designed to be very easy and quick to install, even for those with little or no server programming or database scripting knowledge, thorough a four step process.

  1. Unpack SpryPanel from the file you downloaded (unzip the archive)
  2. Modify the 'site_prefs.php' in 'sprypanel' -> 'sprypanel_system' with your MySQL and web-site details
  3. Upload the 'sprypanel' directory to your http document root on your web-server
  4. Load SpryPanel through your web-browser at http://www.your_site.com/sprypanel. Then register it with your 20 digit code and create a user account.

These steps are explained in more detail below. We will assume at this point that you have successfully downloaded the SpryPanel archive, after your purchase of it. At this point you will also have been e-mailed a license key, which will be needed later on in the installation process.

1. The first step you need to do is to unpack the SpryPanel archive you downloaded. There are several extraction tools available for all platforms and you probably already have at least one on your computer, if not http://www.stuffit.com is a good place to start. Once you have extracted the archive, you will have a directory (folder) called 'sprypanel' where you unpacked it. This contains all the files needed to run SpryPanel.

2. The next step is to tell SpryPanel a few of the system variables that it will need to run. This includes information about the MySQL database, and a little bit about your web-site. This is the only point during your use of SpryPanel that you will be required to open a text editor to make any changes of this nature. Open the directory (folder) 'sprypanel' -> 'sprypanel_system', and then open the file 'site_prefs.php' in your favourite text editor.

This file contains all the basic information that SpryPanel needs to access your database server. Under the MySQL server heading:

$sp_db_user - The user name that you use to access your MySQL server account
$sp_db_pass - The password that you use to access your MySQL server account
$sp_db - The database name that SpryPanel will use
$sp_db_server - The server where your MySQL database is (this can be an IP address or a domain name)


For example you might have a 'site_prefs.php' file that looks like this:

$sp_db_user = "database_user";
$sp_db_pass = "password";
$sp_db = "sprypanel_web";
$sp_db_server = "fruit.sprynetwork.net";


Path settings and your web-site url will be automatically decteded by SpryPanel, however there is an option to set them yourself if you wish using the following two variables:

$site_base_uri - The URL of your web-site site
$site_base_dir - The absolute path to the http documents directory on your web server

3. That's the hardest part of the installation process. The next step is to upload the entire 'sprypanel' directory to your web-server. You can do this through ftp access to your server. If you set up your ftp client and then simply upload the whole directory to the http document root of your web-server (something like 'httpdocs' or 'mainwebsite_html'). Make sure that you upload it to the root directory, unless you know what you are doing with your web-server's path names. Depending on the speed of your connection, this may take a short while.

4. The final step is to register SpryPanel, and set up a user account. You do this by loading up your web-browser and accessing SpryPanel. To access SpryPanel point your web-browser at 'http://www.your_site.com/sprypanel', where 'your_site.com' is the domain name of your web-site. Once you are at that page you will find a greeting page which asks you to register SpryPanel. You do this simply by entering the 20 digit license code that you were e-mailed when you purchased the software. At this point you also need to set up a user name and a password for that user. This initial user is set up as a super user (complete access to all of SpryPanel). Then click 'Register' that is it :-). You will now be able to login to SpryPanel!


Installation difficulties?
The most common difficulty that is encountered during installation is that SpryPanel cannot access your MySQL database. If this is the case you will receive an error message explaining why. You will need to then modify your site-prefs.php file as explained above with the correct access details. If you still cannot access your database please contact your server administrator as the database probably hasn't been set up correctly.

If when you attempt to access SpryPanel you are greeted with a blank screen instead of the register page you are one of the few who need a slight modification made to your php.ini file. As discussed above we have taken the measure of encoding SpryPanel's core files. This requires a dynamically loaded library in order to decode before it will run. If you receive a white page with an error message when you try to run SpryPanel for the first time, load the following address to find out how you can modify your server to use SpryPanel (its very easy :-) - http://your-site.com/sprypanel/sprypanel_system/install_info.php.

If you have any problems installing SpryPanel which isn't solved by this documentation, please feel free to contact us at support@sprypanel.com or use our support web-site.

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