How To Install Drupal

How to install Drupal to your server is relatively the same as how to install WordPress to your server. You can use Fantastico to install Drupal or do it manually. I suggest you do it manually because managing Drupal will usually require you to access the backend of your website. It will be of great advantage to us if during installation, we can familiarize the directory structure of Drupal. We will follow the same steps in installing WordPress manually on manual installation of Drupal.

Install Drupal Manually
Many of the the steps we will do here are essential skills on managing our Drupal powered website.
1. Go to Drupal.org and download the latest release of Drupal. It is an archive package of .tar.gz extension.
2. Login to your cPanel account by going to example.com:2082
3. Upload the Drupal package to the folder in your server where you want to install Drupal. For step by step guide on how to upload files to your server, refer to my previous post How to Upload Files to the Server.
4. Extract the .tar.gz package. Make sure that all Drupal files and folders are inside the directory where you want to install Drupal. Meaning, if you want to install Drupal at the root directory of your site, make sure that all Drupal files and folders are inside public_html not inside public_html/drupal-x.xx.
5. Inside the cPanel, scroll down to "Databases" and click "MySQL Databases" icon.
6. In "Create New Database" enter the name of your database. In most cases, cPanel will prefix your database name with your web hosting username. The complete name of your database would then be accountname_databasename.
7. Add a "New MySQL User". It is a good practice to name your user the same as the name of your database.
8. Add the new user to the new database and give the user all privileges over that database. This can be accomplished in "Add User To Database" section below the "New MySQL User".
9. In the Drupal directory, look for the file named default.settings.php. It is located at ./sites/default folder, where "." represents the directory where you install Drupal. Copy it to another folder, rename it to settings.php then move it back to ./sites/default folder.
10. You are now ready to run the Drupal installation. Go to your website by typing example.com to the web browser. Follow the screen instruction and supply all the necessary information for your Drupal website.

Install Drupal with the use of Fantastico
Using Fantastico to install Drupal is really straightforward.
1. Login to your cPanel account by going to example.com:2082
2. In the cPanel, scroll down to "Software/Services" and click the "Fantastico" icon.
3. In Fantastico, look for Drupal in the sidebar and click it.
4. Read the on-screen instructions and supply all necessary information for your Drupal website.
That's it, using Fantastico is very easy but I discourage you to use it. Here are some reasons why.
• You have no control over the name of the database and database user.
• You cannot control which Drupal release you are going to install. Many times, Fantastico is not updated with the latest release of Drupal.
• Learning the directory structure of Drupal is very essential in maintaining your site. You will loss the opportunity of dealing with Drupal's directory when going with Fantastico.