Support Center
Discussion Board
Blog
About Us
View CartHow to install Magento, an eCommerce Software
Written by Raymond Wong Saturday, 10 January 2009
This tutorial is for users who would like to install Magento, a popular eCommerce software businesses use to help them sell products through their website. However, most eCommerce software is compatible with Arvixe services and people have the freedom to choose which software they like to use. For the purpose of this demo, I will use the domain magento.arvixedemo.com as an example.
Tutorial:
1. Go to http://www.magentocommerce.com/download/noregister and download the “full release” package onto your home computer in any format, but I recommend .zip for most users.
2. Once the download finishes, log in to cPanel at (your domain)/cpanel, such as magento.arvixedemo.com/cpanel. In most cases, the username and password will be the same as the ones during the signup process with Arvixe. After logging in, you may either use a FTP client like Filezilla or File Manager on cPanel.
- If you are using a FTP client, connect to your home directory. The host is typically your domain, the username and password is the same as the cPanel log in, and the port is typically 21. Once connected, locate the magento installation package, named magento-1.2.0.zip or magento-1.2.0.tar.gz, etc. Drag and drop the package into any directory within public_html, but I recommend uploading the package into public_html, which I will explain in a moment.
- If you are using the File Manager provided on cPanel. Simply go to the public_html folder, then select upload, and select the magento package (magento-1.2.0.zip, etc.) to upload it to your folder.
3. Once you upload the magento package, you may use file manager’s extraction tool to extract the files within the package. Go to file manager and select the magento package, then extract it to any folder you want. The extraction tool will typically create a folder called magento, which contains all the installation files.
- If you want magento to start on your home page, you may move all the installation files to public_html, otherwise you will see magento installed at wherever your magento folder was extracted to, such as public_html/magento.
Note: Most of file manager’s tools are located at the top of the page:
4. Now you have all the installation files extracted to your directory. Now Magento requires PHP5 to run, so if you are on our EAGLE or BANANA server, then your default PHP loader is 4, all other servers(APE, LION, HAWK, BAT, etc. will have PHP5 as the default). For those on EAGLE and BANANA, PHP5 is setup on the server, so you may switch to it if you want to. I recommend it because it’s better than PHP4 in my opinion, but also since Magento requires PHP5. To change the loader to PHP5, go to cPanel and scroll down to “Software/Services,” and you should see “PHP Configuration.”
PHP Configuration
Once you go to “PHP Configuration,” you should see a statement “The “.php” file extension will be processed by” and you select PHP5, then update.
5. Once you change the PHP loader, you need to create a database for Magento. Go to “MySql Databases under the “Database” menu, which is right above the “Software/Services” menu. Then create a new database. You may call the database whatever you want, but call it something such that you will know the database is for Magento. Once you create the database, you should see a database in the form of (username)_(database name you just created).
6. Now open a new browser window and in the address bar, enter (your domain)/(directory where magento folder is located), e.i. magento.arvixedemo.com/magento (there is no need to place public_html in the address because the domain magento.arvixedemo.com will, in a sense, do that for you). It should take you the installation page for Magento. Most of the information provided should already be provided for you. You agree to the terms and conditions, hit next, select your location, hit next. Now if a message that says something like “PHP extension pdo_mysql must be loaded,” then read the next bullet point.
- If you get the message that tells you “pdo_mysql must be loaded,” then do the following. You need to create a file called php.ini which will load certain php settings. Either open up notepad or a text editor on your computer and put the following statements inside:
extension=pdo.so
extension=pdo_mysql.so
- Save the file as php.ini. Then upload the file into your magento directory and subdirectories, app, lib, and media.
- Restart the installation and you should be able to bypass the message.
(The image below is the first page you should see for the Magento Install)
Again most of the fields will be intelligently guessed for you. However, when it asks you to enter you database information, the host normally stays “localhost,” but the database name will be the same one you created in the last step, in the format (username)_(database name). The username and password in most cases will be the same as the cpanel login information. Continue you on to the admin setup page, and create an admin account for Magento. Once you do that, you are all set. You may preview how Magento will work on your site by going to magento.arvixedemo.com
You have just successfully installed Magento. If, however, you feel something is missing in this tutorial that should be pointed out, please comment the blog. I hope this tutorial helped.
Hello .
regarding the installation of Magento IN vodahost Control Panel
I followed all your steps and got very close to installing it, but when i get to the point:
* If you get the message that tells you “pdo_mysql must be loaded,” then do the following. You need to create a file called php.ini which will load certain php settings. Either open up notepad or a text editor on your computer and put the following statements inside:
extension=pdo.so
extension=pdo_mysql.so
i did create this file and uploaded them but it still does the same, it is still saying “pdo_mysql must be loaded”
what should i do?
Please assist
Mensur,
Magento has a very picky installer and requires some unusual modules. The instructions here are assuming PHP is running as CGI. If PHP is not as CGI, and it still gives that error, your host doesn’t have that module installed.
These are instructions work properly on our servers at http://www.arvixe.com. If you’d like to switch to us, we will be more than glad to offer some discounts as well as move your files over for you.
i read it carefully and will be glad to reconsider your offer sir,
but it is really important if for now you can help me fix this problem in voda host,
i highly appreciate your assistance
thank you
One more thing, CGI is installed on the host
This is not CGI. Its PHP as CGI. Its completely different than a CGI-Bin. Hosts don’t like to run PHP as CGI if they’ve been running it as an Apache module for a long time because it causes a lot of problems. So you will have to contact them to install the PDO module. If they won’t do it, you can’t run Magento.
I just opened an account with you yesterday, I tried installing Magento 1.3 on my hosting plan. It says the installation was succesful, but I am getting errors on the page in both the Admn and main page. these are the errors on the main page.
Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; Embedded Web Browser from: http://bsalsa.com/; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Timestamp: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 02:53:50 UTC
Message: ‘Translate’ is undefined
Line: 30
Char: 1
Code: 0
URI: http://www.tmatesscreenprinting.com/index.php/
Message: ‘Varien’ is undefined
Line: 49
Char: 17
Code: 0
URI: http://www.tmatesscreenprinting.com/index.php/
Message: Object expected
Line: 190
Char: 5
Code: 0
URI: http://www.tmatesscreenprinting.com/index.php/
Don,
There is definitely something wrong but I’ve never seen that error before. Please submit a support request so we can take a look at it. In most case, we have to do a installation from scratch.
-Arvand
what arvixe plan do you need for this
Any plan works. from PersonalClass all the way to EcommerceClass (which comes preinstalled with this)
Nice tutorial from Arvand Sabetian, you are technology guru.
Do you need to put the magento files in the home directory? If you put them in /magento – will it automatically show as your homepage? How can you make it your homepage, while still having it in a sub directory? Thanks
Tyler,
You should put the files inside public_html but if you do want them inside magento then you will need to use the cPanel’s Redirects function to redirect the customers to that subdirectory.
Hello
In general, it’s not complicated. But if anyone have any questions about installation and operation Margento. MAGEWORX.COM will always be glad to help
Thanks
Thanks so much for the tips on install. With this I was finally able to figure out how to install Magento locally onto my computer running Windows XP. Here is a step by step guide on how to install Magento with no errors! http://www.jvfconsulting.com/blog/117/How_To_Install_Magento_Locally_On_Windows_XP.html
I am getting this error on my windows hosting machine
CGI Error
The specified CGI application misbehaved by not returning a complete set of HTTP headers.
How do I fix this. I have looked all over and I can not found a way to fix it.
Please contact support to assist you with that.
hi,i tried myself and did everything what you said in tutorial but i am getting same error.
PHP Extension “pdo_mysql” must be loaded
please help.
Please make sure to include extension=pdo_mysql.so inside your php.ini or remove the php.ini entirely from your public_html (if you are using us for hosting)
This doesn’t go smooth …
I tried to install magento. First i used the magento test-tool, that checked the system ans said Congrts, you can install magento etc ..
Then i used the installer provided @ http://www.magentocommerce.com/
The istaller worked and told me all filles extracted successfully …
But pressing the ‘continue’ button NOTHING happent (license should be next)
Then i checked the local help and found 2 articles.
First i tried to use softaculous, but this just said ‘errors on download’.
At least i went through the steps of the above installation Upload / extraction / database / php.ini file/ but when accessing fruit-company.com/magento i get an error message. I treid some changes in the directory permissions, but that didn’t help …
This was a quick sound solution to the problem. I had no issues, once adding the instructed lines:
extension=pdo.so
extension=pdo_mysql.so
…to the php.ini file and uploading the updated file into the root Magento installation folder.
Richard,
I suggest re-using softaculous. The new softaculous tries to download the software so if the vendors’ download servers are offline, it will fail with that error. Softaculous *should* at all times give you a satisfactory result. If you encounter issues with it, do let us know and we’ll investigate.
I enjoyed this post thank you!
This is a really helpful run through. I got a lot out of your database section. I didn’t know about the php.ini file. It really helped so thank you.
i do like this thread, a lot really useful things to remember
Whats up very cool site!! Guy .. Excellent .. Wonderful .. I’ll bookmark your blog and take the feeds additionally?I am satisfied to find so many helpful information here within the post, we want develop more techniques on this regard, thank you for sharing. . . . . .
Thanks for sharing such great article. It helped to install Magento. Thanks again for posting.
Hi,
Thanks for posting the content about magento. please post more information about the magento advantages to ebusiness and how it will help to increase the sales…
Thansk,
Raju
I have downloaded magento software for the link provided above in the post,thanks for the easy steps which are provided.
Can we share this in network and use in more than one computer.
Hi, As long as you are using the community edition you can install it on more than one computer. You will want to read the license agreement about sharing it through.
Hi am developing website using python for long time, after reading this article i like to use magento ecommerce, Thanks for sharing the article.
Old but still useful! Thanks