Prior dotProject installation

dotProject is a product completely crafted in PHP. It's built to dovetail into Apache2 perfectly.

It's install process is simplicity in itself.

The dotProject setup file downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/dotproject/ is a zipped file. Extract the contents of the archive using Winzip or any other archiving tool as shown in Diagram 1

Diagram 1

During extraction, all the files contained in the archive will be extracted to a folder, named dotproject_{version_number} as shown in Diagram 2.

Diagram 2

If the archive was downloaded and extracted to E:\dotproject_2_1_3 i.e dotproject 2.1.3, there will now be a folder called BigBlueHat-dotproject-527fa57. All the contents of the file are contained in a folder named dotproject as shown in Diagram 3.

Diagram 3

Copy all the contents to the root of the folder and delete the BigBlueHat-dotproject-527fa57 folder as shown in Diagram 4.

Diagram 4

Create a folder named “errors”. Open the folder and create a text document file named errors.log in it as shown in Diagram 5.

!diagram5.gif
Diagram 5

Rename the folder dotproject_{version_number} to dotproject as shown in Diagram 6.

Diagram 6

You are now ready to install dotproject on your local computer.

Dotproject is normally installed on your local computer within a folder that is controlled by Apache Web Server.

NOTE: The installation and configuration of Apache Web Server is given in another tutorial on this website.

The parent folder in which dotproject is installed on an Internet based host server is normally public_html. Hence your local computer should have a folder like E:\public_html.

NOTE: Normally the folder public_html is at root level. Not within another folder.

You can create E:\public_html using Windows explorer as shown in Diagram 7. Once E:\public_html is created, put the folder named dotproject within it.

Diagram 7

Now Apache Web server needs to be informed of the existence of E:\public_html\dotproject.

This is done by adding virtual domain codespec to Apache´s httpd.conf file.

The technique for doing this is described in the dotproject Virtual Domain tutorial on this website.
Which is the next tutorial in this series.

NOTE: The latest version of dotproject requires the extension php_mbstring.dll to be uncommented from the php.ini file located in C:\Windows as shown in Diagram 8.

Diagram 8