Installation
Documentation > Administration > InstallationReady to begin using BoltWire? Just follow the directions below to get it set up and running. Warning: it probably takes longer to read the instructions than to carry them out!
To use BoltWire, you only need a basic webserver (like Apache) with PHP enabled (PHP5 recommended), and the boltwire zip download. Then, follow the instructions below. For more information about setting up your own webserver, so you can run BoltWire offline, see this tutorial for Windows or this one for a Mac.1. Extract the contents of the boltwire download into a directory on your hard drive. You should end up with a folder called "boltwire" with several files and subdirectories in it. And a folder called "field".
2. (Optional). If you wish to use an id for your super-admin account other than "admin", use a text editor to edit the index.php inside that folder. This file should contain the following three lines:
$BOLTadmin='admin';
include_once('../boltwire/barn/scripts/engine.php');
Replace 'admin' with the member id you prefer (lower case letters and numbers only). You can also put "id1,id2,id3" if there are multiple users you want to give super-admin status to, though it is generally preferable to assign normal admin powers to others using BoltWire's internal group management system.
3. To create your first site, rename the "field" folder to something simple, like "mysite"--all lowercase, one word. To create multiple sites, create several folders, each with a unique name. Make sure there is a copy of index.php in each one. Each site (folder) is called a "field" in BoltWire. The entire installation is your "farm". The boltwire directory, where the code is established can be thought of as the "barn", serving all the fields in your farm.
4. Finally, upload the "boltwire" and "field" directories to your webspace. It is usually a folder called htdocs or www or public_html, depending on your server installation. Once you have done this, your installation is about complete.
Note: If you are using a Linux server, you will need to verify that the permissions for the boltwire folder and it's subdirectories are set to 755. The field folders should be set to 777. And the index.php files should all be set to 644. You do not have to worry about file permissions if you are on a windows server.
To see your new site, just point your browser to the index.php file of your field, and BoltWire should spring to life--creating all other needed files and folders automatically! The link should look like http://www.domain.com/mysite/index.php. If you are using BoltWire offline, try http://localhost/mysite/index.php.Your first task should be to register and password protect the member account(s) you assigned super-admin powers, to prevent someone else from gaining control of that account--and your site. Just click the register link at the top of your new site, and enter "admin" (or the id you chose) and a password. You will then be logged in and ready to go!
It may be your server is running in PHP's "safe" mode, which will prevent BoltWire from properly creating folders it can write to. The solution is to use FTP to create the following directories in your field folder and then chmod them to 777: backups, config, files, indexes, pages, stamps. Any that are automatically created by BoltWire should be deleted first and then recreated via FTP.
There are many other ways to configure and setup your BoltWire farm installation. The farms tutorial looks at options for installing your field in the root directory rather than a subdirectory, how to move the code out of web writable space for heightened security, and a couple multi-barn approaches to make upgrades easier. Also, if you are an experienced web administrator, you may wish to look at the cleanURLs tutorial, to learn more about aliasing your URL's, to make them shorter, simpler, and more search engine friendly.
Lot's of options to experiment with down the road a bit. But for now, we suggest you just dive in and get started!