Installation & Configuration

How do I install Nucleus?

Written and contributed by Leng Lui.
Turkish translation available at Nucleus’u nasıl kurabilirim? by nucleustr.

Scenario:
"I think Nucleus is really great and I want to use it for my site/blogging community. How do I install it?"

Solution:
Just follow this walkthrough and you'll have Nucleus up and running in no time! All you'll need is

• a server which meets the minimum requirements for PHP and MySQL;
• a utility program which can open .zip files, such as 7-Zip (opensource), WinRAR (shareware) or WinZip (shareware); and
• an FTP program (optional, but preferably due to the number of files that must be uploaded to the server) such as Core FTP (freeware version available) or FileZilla (opensource).

If you are looking to install Nucleus on your local hard drive, it is recommended you follow the FAQ article "Can I run Nucleus offline from my local computer/hard drive without being online?" prior to this FAQ article.

Contents:

• Walkthrough
• Further reading

For those who would like to see a little more action, here's karma's very own interactive Nucleus installation walkthrough:

• Karma's Interactive Nucleus Installation Walkthrough

Walkthrough:

1. Download the latest version of Nucleus from the Nucleus site. At the time of writing this walkthrough, the latest version is 3.2.

   

   Save the .zip file to your computer.

2. Extract the files from the .zip. All the Nucleus files have been zipped inside a folder called nucleus 3.2. Open the folder and you should have something like this:

   

3. Open up your FTP client and connect to your server. Navigate to your /public_html/ folder on your server (circled in red) and your \nucleus 3.2\ folder on your hard drive (circled in green). Here you can choose whether you want to install Nucleus in your top directory (http://yoursite.com/) or a subdirectory (http://yoursite.com/subdirectory/). Since I'm already running a Nucleus installation in my top directory, I'm going to install Nucleus in a subdirectory called /testing/.

   Upload all the files in the \nucleus 3.2\ folder to the directory you want to install Nucleus in. In my case, I've uploaded all my files to /public_html/testing/ (area in blue square).

   

4. Next, we'll have to create a MySQL database for Nucleus to use. Login to your server's administration area. For this tutorial, we'll be using the Cpanel interface. Ensim users, please see the Ensim Database Installation Walkthrough.

   Go into the MySQL databases admin area (circled in red).

   

5. Scroll down until you find the part which allows you to add a database (circled in red). Give your database a name and add it. I'm going to call mine ncls1.

   

6. Great, we now have a database! But there's no use having a database if nobody can access it. Scroll down again to create a new user for the database. My database user is going to be "ncls1" with a password of "password".

   

   You should get some sort of confirmation to let you know you've done it right.

   

7. The last part of setting up the MySQL database is adding the user to the database's access list (circled in red). Select the user and database you want to pair up. I will be adding lenglui_ncls1 to lenglui_ncls1. Make sure you give your user all privileges.

   

   Again, you should be taken to a confirmation screen:

   

   Your MySQL admin screen should now look like this:

   

8. Now it's time to run the install script! To do this, head to http://yoursite.com/install.php, where yoursite.com is the URL to your site. But if you've installed in a subdirectory like me, you'll need to go to http://yoursite.com/subdirectory/install.php where subdirectory is the name of the subdirectory you uploaded your Nucleus files to. Since I installed Nucleus in the /testing/ subdirectory, I need to go to http://leng-lui.info/testing/install.php".

   You should arrive a page that looks something like this:

   

9. Enter in your MySQL login details. Remember the MySQL database and user you created earlier? This is where the information goes. Your hostname will usually be localhost. Mine looks like this:

   

10. Nucleus should automatically detect your directories and paths for you. Just check to see that they're the correct absolute paths for your server (if you get a "The path of the administration area does not exist" error later, see this article). You should have something like this:

    

11. Next, enter the details for the administrator user and your default blog.

    

    Hit submit and go on to the final part.

12. So that Nucleus knows what your server paths and MySQL details are, copy/paste the information here to the config.php file in your \nucleus 3.2\ folder on your computer.

    

    

13. Switch back to your FTP program and upload the new config.php file to your server, overwriting the old file. Just a few more things to tidy up:

    

    Delete install.php and install.sql from your server (circled in red). Choose "Yes to all" (circled in blue).

    

Congratulations! You've just successfully installed Nucleus!

By default, Nucleus comes with one blog item already written. You can edit this item to really complete setting up your new Nucleus site.

1. Login to your Nucleus administration area located at http://yoursite.com/nucleus/ (or http://yoursite.com/subdirectory/nucleus/ if you installed in a subdirectory).

   

2. Click on "Edit/Delete Items" (circled in red).

   

3. Here, you'll see a list of all the items in your blog. At the moment, we only have that first default item. Click on the "Edit" link to edit the item.

   

4. Delete the text in the Body textarea as well as the Extended area. Change the title to whatever you want and write a little blurb to introduce your website.

   

5. Click on "Edit Item" to save your changes. This will take you back to the page listing all the items you have in your blog.

   

6. Click on the "Your site" link to visit your new Nucleus site, with welcome message and all.

   

Congratulations! You have just edited your first Nucleus item!

Further reading:
Now that you've installed Nucleus, you probably want to customize it to your own needs. Remember to check out the helpful articles in our "Getting started" section of this FAQ website and see our "Troubleshooting" section if something goes wrong!

To get you started, here are some links to the building blocks.

• What is the difference between a skin and a template?
• How do I change the look of my site?
• How do I import a skin?
• How do I install a plugin?
• How do I change the links in the default skin?
• How do I add/rename/delete categories?
• How do I add extra pages to my Nucleus site?
• Is there a basic user manual/guide for Nucleus?

If you have a question that has not been answered, come and ask us at our very friendly Nucleus Support Forum!