How to install Siberian SAE

First of all, Siberian CMS is a self-hosted platform. That means you must have a web hosting, and it has to meet the requirements to install Siberian CMS correctly. Most of actual web servers fit to these requirements, thus don’t be worried by this, just find a hosting provider, install the CMS and, if it works, that means your hosting is well configured for Siberian.

Elements needed

Here is what you need before to proceed to the install:

• an FTP software, you can download and install Filezilla for instance
• FTP access
• A MySQL Database. Create it from your hosting admin panel.
• A subdomain and its associated folder on your server. Siberian CMS can be installed on a subdomain or a main domain only, and not in a subdirectory (apps.mydomain.com Vs mydomain.com/apps). If you want to install it on a subdomain, create this subdomain and the associated folder from your hosting panel.
• If you encounter some problems, you can look at our notes below
• Don’t forget to update your Siberian to the last version to get the new features and improvements, click here

The installation, step by step

Installation of Siberian CMS

• Connect to your hosting admin panel
• Then, create a MySql database. Don’t worry, it’s just about clicking on a button and creating credentials. It depends on your hosting provider but you may always have the option to create a database, and most of the time it will be a MySQL database. Just find on your interface where to create a MySQL database, and just create it. Save on a text editor, like Notepad, your database name, the database username, the database password and the server name (given by the provider). Here is an exemple on the OVH admin panel, it may look like very different on other admin panels, but the most important for you is to understand the global process:Click on “Manage SQL”:
  Click on “New database”:
  Create your database:
  Actually, Ovh creates itself the database username, the associated password, and sends them by email.
• Create your subdomain. It must be a subdomain, not a CNAME record. Find in your panel where to create a subdomain, and create it. For instance it could be “apps.mydomain.com”. That’s the address on which your Siberian Edition will be installed and where your clients will go to create/manage their apps. Indicate on which folder on your server, this subdomain refers to. Depending on the provider, this folder must, or must not be created prior of creating the subdomain. Most of the time, you just have to indicate the name of the folder and the system will create it if it doesn’t exist. In all cases you will be able to see if it has been created or not, and if not, to create it yourself. We will see that below in the FTP section.
  
• Most of the time, when you buy a hosting, some elements like ftp access are automatically created for you and sent by your provider on your email address. If you see in your inbox that your provider has sent an email with some ftp credentials, just go on the next step. If not, you will have to create an ftp access. Find where on your hosting panel and create an access to the root of your server. Here is an exemple on the OVH admin panel, it may look like very different on other admin panels, but, once again, the most important for you is to understand the global process:
  Here, I click on “Multi-FTP”:
  Then, on create:
  Then, I fill out. Dont bother with the “Directory” field, let it like it is, or enter the path to your subdomain folder (if you let it like it by default you will connect to the root of your server, if you enter the path to your subdomain folder you will have access to only this folder. If you don’t what is the path to the folder, let it like it is):
  Your hosting provider should send you an email as soon as your ftp access has been created with all the info.
• Open Filezilla that you have already installed on your computer, and create a new entry by clicking on this icon In the “Site manager” window, click on “new site” and give it the name you want, like “My Hosting”. Then fill out with the info of your ftp access, and click “connect”:
  Filezilla is going to connect to your server. You will that it is splited in 4 windows. The one on the top left displays the directories that are on your computer, the one on the top right displays the directories that are on your server. The windows at the bottom displays the files that are on your computer and on the selected directory (on the left), and the files that are on your server and on the selected directory (on the right).
• Unzip the package of the Siberian Edition
• Go on Filezilla, if you are not already connected, connect to your server by opening the “Site Manager” and by clicking on “Connect”
• On the top left window, search for the unzipped Siberian folder that has just been created on your computer when you have unzipped the package, select it, and in the window above select all the files and directories:
  
• Now, in the top right window (server side), do this. Go to your subdomain folder. If it hasn’t been already created, create it. You have to create it at the same location that you have filled out when creating the subdomain. For instance, if the location (path) was www/apps, you have to enter in the www folder and then create the apps folder in it from the bottom right window. Then select your folder from the top right window, and the bottom right window should be empty (if not, delete the files and folders that are in it):
  
• Then drag & drop the selected files and directories on the left, to your new folder on the right:
  
• It’s going to take some time since there is more than 5,000 files to transfer from your computer to your server, it may also really depends on the speed of your connexion.
• Once all the files and directories have been transfered to your server. Open your browser and enter your subdomain address. For example, apps.mydomain.com
• The hardest work has been done, you should arrive on the Siberian installer, and you are going to install Siberian.
• Just follow the steps and fill out with the info you already have (like the database info) and choose a login and password to connect to your Siberian backend.
• Once the installation is done, there are two ways to connect to your Siberian Edition:
  • Connect to your backend at subdomain.mydomain.com/backoffice (to keep our previous example: apps.mydomain.com/backoffice)
  • Connect to the app builder that your clients will use at subdomain.mydomain.com (to keep our previous example: apps.mydomain.com), but before accessing the editor, you have to create a user for the editor from your backoffice. Go in Manage > Users and create a user. Then go at apps.mydomain.com and connect with this user.

• Once the 2.9 version is installed, download this Module installer update.
  Download the zip file, go in your backoffice in Settings > Modules and upload this zip file and install it. Then refresh the page and click on the new button “check for update” and proceed to install the updates until the last version.

 

NOTES: here is a list of solutions if you encounter some problems during the installation:

• If you get a page “Internal server error” when trying to install:
  • You have to edit your .htaccess file if it has already been created, and htaccess.txt file. Comment the lines “Options +FollowSymLinks” and “Options -Indexes” in these htaccess files. To comment a line, just add a # before the line, like this “# Options +FollowSymLinks”. Refresh the page to install your Siberian
• During the connection to the database, if you get a message “error”, that means the mod_rewrite isn’t enabled on your server and/or Apache can’t read the htaccess file. See with your hosting provider to enable this and retry to install. It will be ok only once when you enter your-install-url.com/whatever you are redirected to your-install-url.com
• During the connection to the database, if you get a message “The database connection failed. Please check the entered information.”. That means you have entered wrong info for your database. Most of the time your database server is hosted on the same server than the one on which you install Siberian. Just enter “localhost” in the field “host”. But you can also have a specific database server name, like serv.mysql30-pro for example, in this case, and if it doesn’t work with “localhost”, just enter the name of your server. If you still have this error message, that means your database info are not correct.
• In all cases, here are the best permissions to set on the folders: var/ (recursively in all subfolders and files), app/configs, and /images folder should be set in 777 permissions, all others should be set in 775 or 755 permissions (as well as subfolders)