Overview
Drupal is a Content Management System (or CMS) you can use to build your website. It requires no coding experience and offers several modules and extensions to expand the functionality of your site.
In order to use Drupal, you must manually install this program yourself using the steps below.
VPS or Dedicated Servers are recommended
Since Drupal uses a lot of resources, it's highly recommended you only install Drupal on a VPS or Dedicated Server. If you choose to run Drupal on a shared server, you may experience performance issues.
Enabling OPcache before installing Drupal
When you install Drupal, it checks for certain specs on your server. It will show a warning if OPcache isn't enabled, so it's recommended you enable this for performance purposes. View the following article for instructions on how to enable OPcache:
Installing Drupal 8.8.1
You can download the Drupal installation file using an FTP client or using SSH. If you're using an FTP client, visit the Drupal download page and download the .zip file to your computer. Extract it, then upload its contents to your web server.
The following steps show how to download the file via SSH.
- Log into your server via SSH.
- Run the following command to download the Drupal file.
[server]$ wget https://www.drupal.org/download-latest/tar.gz
- Decompress the file.
[server]$ tar -zvxf tar.gz
- Navigate to this directory, then move all of the contents up one level into your site's main directory.
[server]$ cd drupal-8.8.1 [server]$ mv * .[^.]* ..
- Create a MySQL database in your panel. View the MySQL article for instructions.
- Visit your website where you uploaded the Drupal files to begin the installation.
- During the installation process, you’ll need to know your database credentials. You must also change the 'Database host' field from localhost to your actual DreamHost database hostname. View the phpMyAdmin article for information on how to obtain your database credentials.
Changing the database port isn’t required, but the DreamHost Database port is 3306. You can then choose a table prefix if you feel inclined to do so.
Upgrading to a private MySQL server
Drupal can use a lot of MySQL server resources. If you're noticing slowness you may want to upgrade to a private MySQL server.
Multisite
View the Drupal multi-site guide for instructions on this configuration. Please note that DreamHost support is unable to assist with any errors that may occur as this is a customized setup.
See also
External links
- Drupal – Drupal's Main site.
- Download – Download page for Latest version of Drupal.
- Documentation
- Forum – Drupal's forum, search before asking a question.
- Podcasts – Podcasts (video and audio) by Drupal developers Lullabot.
- Themes – Some preset themes that can easily be used in your Drupal installation.