Abhishek Chatterjee Online

Since I am writing this article and you are reading it, we agree upon the fact that there are problems with installing Drupal on FreeHostia web space. Here I will detail the issues and their workarounds. This may apply to a few other free web space providers as well.

I assume the following of having been done from your side:

* You have a FreeHostia account
* You know how to log into it's FTP site and upload files
* You have downloaded Drupal 6.x and uploaded all the files to a directory
* You have made a copy of default.settings.php and called it settings.php and given it write permissions
* You cannot get Drupal to install by facing one of these issues:
o Server simply throws an error when you try to access the directory or the install.php file
o install.php runs but gives an error saying register_globals is On and it should be Off

The solution is very straight forward once you know what to do. We have two important things to do:

* Make some changes to the .htaccess file
* Create a php.ini file with the settings that we need

1) Make some changes to the .htaccess file

You need to comment out a line that reads
Options +FollowSymLinks
and make it look like the below
# Options +FollowSymLinks

Now you need to change a line that reads
Options -Indexes
and make it read
IndexIgnore *

2) Create a php.ini file with the settings that we need

Create a new empty file using notepad or any other ASCII text editor and call it php.ini
Add the following two lines in it:

register_globals = OFF
memory_limit = 16M

Save the file and upload it to the base directory where you uploaded your Drupal files. Now try accessing install.php and it should run. If it still doesn't, create a test.php file which has as its content. Upload it and try accessing it. If this basic php file also gives an error then there is something still wrong with .htaccess file.


12/13/2008 16:26