[Archon-L] Installing Archon on a Local Machine

[Chris Prom]

In response to some recent reqeusts, I'd like to post these 
instructions for loading Archon on a local machine, such as a 
desktop or laptop.

Please note that while this is not recommended, it will work if 
you are simply hoping to test archon before implementing it.

Before you can load Archon, you must load a software package 
called XAMPP onto your computer, and configure it correctly. 
YOu will need 'administrator' priviledges on the machine for this 
to work correctly.  Also, I should note that depending on the 
computer you load this onto, some parts of Archon may not run 
correctly, due to the way the the XAMPP software seems to 
interact the Archon scripts.

1. Download and install XAMPP software onto the local machine.

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

It is generally best just to use the self-installer packet. 
During the screen that says "XAMPP Options" check the boxes
for "install apache as a service" and "install MySQL as a 
service" Make a note of where xampp is being installed,
generally program files/xampp.

2.  AFter the xampp install script has finished running, 
configure you xampp settings through 'http://localhost' in a web 
browser, if you think this is necessary.  You may wish to tighten 
the security up a bit, it is totally at your discretion.  You 
should be very careful if you change any of the security 
settings, since it may break XAMPP.  If you computer has other 
security settings in place (e.g. is behind a firewall), it should 
not be necessary to fine tune the settings.

3.  Go into PHPmyAdmin through the link from 
http://localhost/xampp.  Create a database for the archon web 
application to use.  If desired, go under the privileges tab, 
make a new user and password.  Make sure the user has full 
rights.  Note the name of the new database, user and password. 
It would be best to use COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci when creating the 
DB so that ARchon will support the full character set.  If you do 
not wish to make a user, you can just use the user 'root' to 
connect to archon, with a blank (empty) password.

4. Open the Archon self installer file and and complete the 
fields (more information on what to include is in the admin 
manual on the project website).  Use localhost or 127.0.0.0 for 
the server address and enter the name of the datbase you created, 
the database login, and password.  Upload the files to the 
correct local drive where you want Archon to be installed. This 
has to be has to be in your xampp document root, which will 
generally be something like c:\program 
files\xampp\htdocs\archon).  In the field for Archon Web address 
type http://localhost/archon.

5. Instead of using the install packet, you can manually copy the 
archon folder to programfiles/xampp/htdocs, the set the
user, password, database, etc in config.inc.php.  once you have 
the setting in the config file, go to
http://localhost/archon/install/index.php to complete the 
installation.

The base url for archon will then be http://localhost/archon.

Thanks,

Chris

--

Christopher J. Prom
Assistant University Archivist
University of Illinois Archives
19 Library
1408 W. Gregory Dr.
Urbana, IL 61801

phone:	217.333.0798
fax:	217.333.2868
e-mail:	prom at uiuc.edu
web:	http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ahx