1. Server Requirements

CiviCRM 2.0 Standalone has been developed and tested on the following 'recommended' platforms:

• Linux (especially Ubuntu and Red Hat / CentOS)
• Apache 2.x
• PHP 5.2.x
• MySQL 5.x
  Caution: Under Linux, the optional CiviMail component requires PHP with SOAP and DOM extensions, Postfix 2.2 (a mailer), and Perl 5.8.X. (more info...)

2. Linux/UNIX installation

These instructions are based on an Ubuntu Linux installation (version 7.10 "gutsy" or the upcoming 8.04 "hardy" are your best bets) and I've included tips for Red Hat / CentOS 5 in a few places too. Your mileage may vary on other distros / Unices.

Follow these steps:

1. Install Apache, MySQL 5 (server and client), and PHP5. Everything should already be installed on a typical Red Hat / CentOS 5 system.
   • Ubuntu / Debian installation command:

     sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server libmysqlclient15-dev php5-mysql php-db

2. Download the latest release version of CiviCRM 2.0 to your home directory. Grab the latest "drupal" tarball from here. (Even though we're doing a standalone installation, get the "drupal" tarball. The joomla one may work too, but it hasn't been tested.)
3. Make sure the tarball is in your home directory on your Linux system. If you're uploading it to a remote web server, usually you can just put it in the first directory your FTP client drops you into.
4. Untar the archive to your web-root (defaults to /var/www/ on Ubuntu and /var/www/html on Red Hat / CentOS). You'll need to get a shell on your Linux system if you don't already have one. Usually this is done via SSH for a remote web server or by running a Terminal if you're using a Linux system locally.

   cd /var/www (or cd /var/www/html)
   sudo tar xzvf ~/civicrm-2.0.1-drupal.tar.gz

   Security warning It is generally considered bad security practice to put an entire system like CiviCRM under the docroot of a web server. This exposes a lot of files and code to potential hackers that really isn't necessary. If you're just testing CiviCRM Standalone on a machine that isn't accessible from the Internet, it's probably not a big deal. But don't even think about setting up a live production server without following these directions.

5. Create the templates_c, custom, and upload directories

   cd /var/www/civicrm (or wherever your CiviCRM installation is located)
   sudo mkdir standalone/files
   cd standalone/files
   sudo mkdir templates_c custom upload

6. Set the directory ownerships correctly (use whatever user your system runs Apache as, on Ubuntu that's "www-data" as shown below; Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS use "apache" instead):

   cd /var/www/civicrm/standalone
   sudo chown -R www-data:www-data files

7. Access your new CiviCRM installation in your web browser (replace "localhost" with the address of your web server if doing a remote installation): http://localhost/civicrm/standalone/index.php
8. If you see a message that says "Could not find valid configuration dir", click the link below that which says: "If this is a standalone installation and you'd like to re-initialize it, click here."
9. You should now see a page which says "CiviCRM Installation - Database Setup" at the top.
10. Confirm the settings in the initial setup page. Often the MySQL server will have no admin password by default if you just installed it on your Linux system, so you can leave that field blank. The others are probably set correctly already too, so you should just be able to click "Continue >>".
11. You're almost done! Skip down to section 5 "Common steps for all platforms" to finish the installation.

3. Mac OS X installation

TODO

4. Windows installation

TODO

5. Common steps for all platforms

Congratulations! You've finished the hard parts of installing CiviCRM. Now you just need to finish up some housekeeping and you'll be managing your constituent relationships like a pro in no time.

1. You should now see a page that says "CiviCRM First User Setup". If you got an error about the civicrm schema already existing in the MySQL server, then you need to drop the civicrm database from your MySQL server. There are a number of ways to do that, but be very careful that you are not deleting data you'd rather keep! Dropping the database will permanently delete whatever was in there before. That's why the installer doesn't offer to do it for you. Backing it up first is almost always a good idea.
2. Setup your first user. You'll need an OpenID, which you can get from myopenid.com (among other places) if you don't have one. If you have an AIM account, then you already have one: http://openid.aol.com/your-aim-username
3. After you log in, you'll be asked to setup your new user record. This record identifies you in the system, so be as detailed as possible.
4. Once you're finally seeing the CiviCRM dashboard page, you'll probably want to configure the resource URL so that the CSS and images load correctly. This will make everything much less ugly.
   1. Click Administer CiviCRM, then click Global Settings (it's about halfway down the page), then click Resource URLs.
   2. In the top "CiviCRM Resource URL" box, replace the URL that's in there (should be something like: "http://localhost/civicrm/standalone/sites/all/modules/civicrm/") with this: http://yourserver.com/civicrm/