Drupal requires your Netfirms hosting account to support PHP and MySQL. Currently all premium hosting plans on Netfirms support both PHP and MySQL.
A. DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL DRUPAL
1. To install Drupal download the latest version from www.drupal.org.
2. Once you have downloaded and extracted the Drupal files, upload them to
your web site using your FTP program.
B. CREATE A MYSQL DATABASE
Before proceeding with the installation, you will need to create a MySQL database:
1. Log into the Members section at Members Control Panel at http://www.netfirms.com/members
2. Click Site Tools
3. Click Database
4. Click Add
5. Enter a Database Description
The following will be created by the system for your database (please write this information down as you will require it at step D18):
Database Name
Database address or hostname will be MYSQLHOST
User Name
Password
C. IMPORT DRUPAL TABLE STRUCTURE
Once your MySQL database is created, import the Drupal table structure into it:
6. From the Netfirms Control Panel, clic Site Tools
7. Click Database
8. Click Admin
9. Click the phpMyAdmin button
10. In phpMyAdmin, click on the database name in the left column.
11. Click the SQL tab
12. Click the Browse button
13. You will then need to navigate to the appropriate directory to find the data: inside your drupal folder is a folder called database. Open that folder, and select the file: database.4.1.mysql
14. Click Go
D. CONFIGURE DRUPAL SETTINGS.PHP FILE
15. While in the Netfirms Control Panel, click Site Tools
16. Click File Manager
17. Double click the www folder
18. Find the location where you installed Drupal and open the file ../sites/default/settings.php so you can edit the following line according to the information you gathered in step B5 above:
$db_url = 'mysql://username:password@localhost/databasename';
a. Change 'username' in the above string to the username for your database (it begins with 'u').
b. Change 'password' in the string to your database password.
c. Change 'localhost' to: mysqlhost
d. Change 'databasename' to your database's name (it begins with 'd').
19. Save the changed settings.php file
E. CREATE AN ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT FOR YOUR DRUPAL SITE
20. Browse to your Drupal site (eg. If you installed the Drupal files to a folder called drupal, then your Drupal URL would be http://www.yourdomain.com/drupal , where yourdomain.com is your registered domain hosted at Netfirms)
21. Click the Create new account link (in the left column), and then login with that account. The first account will be the administrator account for your Drupal site.
NOTE: Inside the folder you installed Drupal to, create a folder called files. This will be where you will store files such as custom logos, user avatars, and other media associated with your drupal site.
Comments
Can't get it to work with MySQL 5
I am on Netfirms - I've installed the database and copied the Drupal files and changed the settings.php. The mysql command in the settings file doesn't work with MySQL 5 which Netfirms has, it says use mysqli - which I do.
Then I get this message:
"PHP MySQLi support not enabled
We were unable to use the MySQLi database because the MySQLi extension for PHP is not installed. Check your PHP.ini to see how you can enable it.
For more help, see the Installation and upgrading handbook. If you are unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your hosting provider."
Clearly Netfirms has mysqli in their php.ini - I have not overridden it. These are their settings:
http://support.netfirms.com/idx.php/0/762/article/How-do-I-create-a-cust...
What am I supposed to do? I didn't run the permissions script as it didn't work.
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX,
ALTER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES
My Dupal 5.1 site is working
My Dupal 5.1 site is working but not stable on Netfirms.
I can't use clean urls (grayed out) and I have to refresh and use the back arrow a lot when I get blank white pages or connection errors. I don't know if a custom php.ini would help or not? I have email Netfirms support but have not heard back yet.
Update calling Netfirms helped
I emailed netfirms support and withing 48 hours the site became stable.
installing Drupal v5 on netfirms: easy step by step instructions
How do I install Drupal v5.x?
Drupal http://drupal.org is an Open Source Content Management System. Drupal allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website including the following features:
* content management systems
* blogs
* collaborative authoring environments
* forums
* newsletters
* picture galleries
* file uploads and download
Drupal requires your Netfirms hosting account to support PHP and MySQL. Currently all premium hosting plans on Netfirms support both PHP and MySQL.
A. DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL DRUPAL
1. To install Drupal download the latest version from www.drupal.org.
2. Once you have downloaded and extracted the Drupal files, upload them to
your web site using your FTP program.
B. EXTRACT DRUPAL INSTALLATION FILES AND FTP TO YOUR WEB ACCOUNT
3. Using a program such as 7Zip (obtained here: http://www.7-zip.org/) to extract the Drupal installation files to a folder on your Desktop. If your hosting account supports SSH then you can transfer the entire .tar.gz file to your folder, and via SSH run the following commands once connected via SSH:
gzip -d filename.tar.gz
tar -xvf filename.tar
4. Using an FTP client (ie. Filezilla), transfer all of the files from your desktop to your hosting account. Instructions on how to FTP can be found here: http://support.netfirms.com/article.php?id=005
C. CREATE A MYSQL DATABASE ON YOUR HOSTING ACCOUNT
Before proceeding with the installation, you will need to create a MySQL database:
1. Log into the Members section at Members Control Panel at https://controlpanel.netfirms.com
2. Click Site Tools
3. Click Database
4. Click Add
5. Enter a Database Description
The following will be created by the system for your database (please write this information down as you will require it at a later step):
Database Name
Database address or hostname will be MYSQLHOST
User Name
Password
D. INSTALL DRUPAL V5.X
6. Browse to http://yourdomain.com/drupal (where "yourdomain.com" is your registered domain hosted at Netfirms and "drupal" is the folder you uploaded Drupal files to. If you uploaded the Drupal files to your root folder (ie. /www) then simply do not include a folder in the URL.
7. Enter the database information as per step C5 above. Once you have copied the Database name (not the one you chose, but the one assigned by the system d######), userID and password, make sure you click on the "Advanced" link at the bottom. Please change the default setting that says "localhost" to "mysqlhost". Once this is done you may continue with the installation.
E. CREATE AN ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT FOR YOUR DRUPAL SITE
20. Browse to your Drupal site (eg. If you installed the Drupal files to a folder called drupal, then your Drupal URL would be http://www.yourdomain.com/drupal , where yourdomain.com is your registered domain hosted at Netfirms)
21. Click the Create new account link (in the left column), and then login with that account. The first account will be the administrator account for your Drupal site.
NOTE: Inside the folder you installed Drupal to, create a folder called files. This will be where you will store files such as custom logos, user avatars, and other media associated with your drupal site.
More information about using and configuring Drupal can be found at:
Drupal Support: http://drupal.org/support
Drupal Forum: http://drupal.org/forum (may include some useful support tips from Drupal site owners)
Drupal Customizations and Theming: http://drupal.org/handbook/customization
Drupal Handbooks: http://drupal.org/handbooks
locating database file
I have downloaded drupal 6.10 and there is no folder called 'databases' where can I find the 'database.4.1.mysql' file?
They do not support php-cli, so you cannot use Drush
...that, and I've had way too many page load issues, aggregator issues, etc. I'd definitely recommend not using Netfirms for a Drupal site.
No more 500 Internal Server Errors with Drupal 7 on Netfirms
I spent two hours trying to figure out how to get Drupal 7 to work on Netfirms, but the solution is pretty simple once it has been figured out. I found that I needed to edit the global php.ini file using the Netfirms control panel in order to get everything to work. Here's how:
Login to the Netfirms control panel for your account
Click on "CGI and Scripted Language Support" and then click on "PHP Scripting" (http://www2.netfirms.com/member/cgiManagement/PHPplus.bml)
Scroll down to the "Edit your php.ini file for PHP 5" pane and click the edit button.
Modify the following settings (Ctrl-F to find each variable name and change the associated value):
register_globals = off
memory_limit 64M
upload_max_filesize 100M
post_max_size 100M
Hit the save button.
Drupal should work. Make sure you didn't have any of the above settings in your .htaccess file (works nicely on other servers) as the Netfirms server will probably throw up a 500 error on you for trying to do what, on Netfirms, is an illegal operation.
The first one (register_globals) is required (otherwise Drupal will refuse to install) and the other three settings are enough to keep you from getting headaches in the future as the Netfirms defaults for them are pretty small (e.g. 2 MB max upload).
Enjoy!
thanks amatan
thanks amatan
building elegant solutions efficiently
Increase your memory
You should also increase your memory.
memory_limit 128M gives much less memory errors, especially when updating modules.
The upload_max_filesize and post_max_filesize are too big for me, I think a better choice should be 24M or even 32M.
Another thing to remember is that some of the 500 internal server errors have to do with the PHP version you are running.
I've had several problems with PHP 5.3, and had to fallback to version 5.2. The PHP version can be set up on the same page amatan reffered.
«UPDATE»
I've recently solved my issue with netfirms and PHP5.3.13.
It's not hard, but it has its... thing to it.
You can read it here: http://drupal.org/node/1561058#comment-6978088
Hope it helps.
Bruno Mateus