The book walks through the wizard page by page. The wizard is still there, with more pages and more choices, and two commands can fill it in for you. This page lines up the book's pages with today's. The exact screens, fields and messages are in The setup wizard of the installation book; read that when you install.
Warning
.htaccess slows down every request. When .htaccess files are enabled (AllowOverride anything but None), let alone
used, Apache looks for them and reads and evaluates them on every request, in every directory of the path, and
page loading times go up drastically (measured). The only real fix is to switch the feature off for
the virtual host: AllowOverride None in the HTTPS virtual host, and the rules in the virtual host's own
configuration as mod_rewrite rules. That is far faster in production speed tests and well worth the time it takes
to optimize a production configuration. Switch over right away: copy the rules of the
example HTTPS virtual host into your virtual host (with the static cache, also
staticcache_offload.conf), set AllowOverride None, run apachectl configtest, reload Apache and
test the site. The same rules for other servers: nginx, LiteSpeed,
Caddy, IIS, Velocity (built in); where virtual host rules go in a control
panel: Plesk, cPanel, DirectAdmin, ISPConfig.
On LiteSpeed or OpenLiteSpeed, the server's own page cache can also answer anonymous visitors and crawlers without PHP: Page caching with LiteSpeed and OpenLiteSpeed.
The pages
| Book (3.x) | Exponential 6 | What it asks |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Welcome | Welcome | The language of the wizard. A Finetune button appears when an optional test failed. |
| 2 System check | System check | Directories the server must write (var/, settings/, and more), PHP version and extensions, memory_limit. |
| (none) | System finetuning | Hints for the optional tests that did not pass. |
| 3 E-mail settings | Outgoing Email | How mail leaves the site: sendmail, SMTP, or the file transport that only writes mail to files. |
| 4 Choose a database | Choose database system | MySQL or MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MongoDB, Oracle. |
| 5 Database initialization | Database initialization | Host, user, password, database; what to do when it already holds data. |
| 6 Language support | Language support | The default language and any others; add more later in the administration. |
| 7 Site packages | Site package, Package language options | A ready-made site to install. |
| 8 Site access configuration | Site access configuration | URL, port or hostname. |
| 9 Site details | Site details, Site administrator | Title, URL, database name, administrator account. |
| 10 Site security | Site security | The .htaccess file, when you do not use a virtual host. |
| 11 Site registration | Registration | Optional. |
| 12 Finished | Creating sites, Finished | The addresses of the new site and its administration. |
What the book's advice still means
The system check. The book says to give the web server write access to var, settings and design, with
chmod 777 as the quick (and, on shared hosting, unsafe) way, and chown to the web server's user as the better way.
Keep the better way: give the web server's user (or the PHP-FPM pool's user) ownership of the directories it must
write, and nothing wider. Never 777 on a server with other users. See Permissions and ownership.
Choose a database. The book's advice "if you do not have a reason for PostgreSQL, you probably do not need it" generalizes: choose what you can run and back up. SQLite needs no server and is right for trying a site and for small ones; MySQL or MariaDB is the common production choice (Databases).
Languages. Unchanged: do not add languages you are not sure of; you can add one later.
Site packages. The book lists eight packages (Blog, Corporate, Forum, Gallery, Intranet, News, Plain, Webshop) and
recommends Plain to build from scratch. The packages of an Exponential installation are different: the default is
sevenx_multisite, and the packages the installer offers are those found in the package repositories it can reach
(Packages). For a site built from nothing, choose the smallest package offered and read
Building a site without code.
Site access. The three access types of the book are unchanged. URL (/admin) is the simplest; port and
hostname need web server configuration (and DNS, for host names). Every installation now gets three
siteaccesses: site for visitors, admin for the administration and editor for editors. See
Siteaccess settings.
Existing data. When the database already holds data, the wizard asks what to do, as in the book: add to it, remove it, leave it. Back up before you choose.
Skipping the wizard
./console exp:install --applyinstalls from the command line, with the database given as options (Console install).- The kickstarter reads
kickstart.iniand answers the wizard's pages for you (Kickstarter).
Next
Installation problems, then and now.
Source and license
Adapted from chapter 1, "Installing eZ publish", of Learning eZ publish: Building Content Management Solutions by Paul Borgermans, Tony Wood, Paul Forsyth, Martin Bauer, Björn Dieding and Ben Pirt (additional material by Bruce Morrison), second edition, 2024, Book-Learning-eZPublish. Copyright (c) 2004-2024 7x and Graham Brookins. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.3 or any later version, with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts (the license). Changes: the pages matched to Exponential 6; advice on permissions, databases and site packages brought up to date.