In Progress

As of 24 May 2010, this guide is 'In Progress'. This guide covers installation and configuration up to the point of starting configuration of CiviCRM. This will be updated and completed in due course. Please have patience.
If you notice any problems or errors in the guides, please notify me via the relevant forums (Documentation) and don't modify this page.

As of 07 July 2010, the installation guide will be complete (almost) and contain some documentation on data migration and some common pitfalls. CiviMail configuration will follow.

Background

I was recently invited to implement CiviCRM for a non-profit organisation. I have been involved with this organisation since it was founded and provided advice and assistance on IT over the last three years.

Researching the installation requirements of CiviCRM and noting that it had only been tested on Linux/Apache/Drupal etc, I looked at the possibility of replacing the local Windows XP Server with CentOS. Several days later I concluded that while the replacement of the file/print server on the network with a Linux box would provide more functionality and better compatibility with CiviCRM, the learning-curve and the ongoing support and troubleshooting issues of the new system would be difficult for the full-time employees (having never used any Linux).

This left me with the decision to attempt the entire installation and configuration of CiviCRM on Microsoft IIS 5.1 (with Windows XP). This guide should hopefully consolidate the Q&A of other administrators in the same position.

Prerequisites

To follow this guide, it will be necessary to locate and download the following into a directory dedicated for your CiviCRM files:

Microsoft IIS 5.1
PHP 5.2.13 zip package. Download
MySQL 5.1.46 Download
phpMyAdmin 3.3.2 Download
Drupal 6.16 Download

CiviCRM 3.1.4 Download

Handy Hint

It may be a good idea to download and install Notepad++ as this handles all types of ascii files and is a useful editor for the changes to the configuration later.
You can download Notepad++ here

Certain information is required during this guide that is relevant only to a specific case. These are:

IP Address of the Server (can be obtained by accessing command prompt and executing ipconfig)
Root username and password for MySQL database installation
Default username and password for the Drupal MySQL database and default administrator

Default username and password for the CiviCRM MySQL database and default administrator
This information is placed inside < and >

Warning

It will be necessary to plan for downtime during the installation and configuration process. The server will need to be restarted twice during the installation, so if the server (in my case) acts as a file/print server, then some planning is recommended.

Server Details

Initially I used Microsoft Virtual PC to test and install all requirements, noting any problems with solutions. Since I am creating this guide at the point of data migration, the installation and configuration has been completed on the production server. The server details are as follows:

Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP3
RAM: 1GB
HDD: 2 (80GB & 250GB)
Processor: Pentium 4 HT 3.4Ghz

Installation and Configuration

I recommend that the following guide is completed in order and on a clean server (with no previous installations of the aforementioned applications)

Configuration for 'Intranet'

Most installations on a Windows XP IIS 5.1 will be for local network access only and NOT accessible from the internet (unless you really know what you're doing!). In order to prevent the hassle of configuring the hosts file of each computer on the network to forward 'localhost' to the server installation, there are some changes later to the MySQL permissions and the configurations of Drupal and CiviCRM to allow access through the server name:

For example, http:///drupal (http://%3cserver_name%3e/drupal) rather than http://localhost/drupal

This may also allow changes in the configuration to disable the MySQL dnslookup that can impact performance.

CiviCRM

Hopefully, all previous steps have completed successfully. If so, we can configure CiviCRM customising it to our requirements, and prepare our data for migration to the system.

CiviCRM Configuration

Installation of CiviCRM on Microsoft IIS