It's time to install the product and configure it minimally for first-time use.
Our reason for installing phpMyAdmin could be one of the following:
- Our host provider did not install a central copy
- Our provider installed it, but the version installed is not current
- We are working directly on our enterprise's web server
Some host providers offer an integrated web panel where we can manage accounts, including MySQL accounts, and also a file manager that can be used to upload web content. Depending on this, the mechanism that we use to transfer phpMyAdmin source files to our webspace may vary. We will need some specific information (listed below) before starting the installation:
- The web server's name or address: Here, we will assume it to be www.mydomain.com.
- Our web server's account information (username, password): This information will be used for either FTP or SFTP transfer, SSH login, or web control panel login.
- The MySQL server's name or IP address: If this information is not available, a good alternative choice is
localhost, which means that the MySQL server is located on the same machine as the web server. We will assume this to be localhost. - Our MySQL server's account information (username, password).
The up-to-date requirements for a specific phpMyAdmin version are always stated in the accompanying Documentation.html file. For phpMyAdmin 3.3, the minimum PHP version required is PHP 5.2 with session support and the Standard PHP Library (SPL). Moreover, the web server must have access to a MySQL server (version 5.0 or later)The up-to-date requirements for a specific phpMyAdmin version—either locally or on a remote machine. It is strongly recommended that the PHP mcrypt extension be present for improved performance in cookie authentication mode (more on this in Chapter 2, Configuring Authentication and Security). In fact, on a 64-bit server, this extension is required.
On the browser side, cookie support must be activated, whatever authentication mode we use.
There are various files available in the Download section of http://www.phpmyadmin.net. There might be more than one version offered here, and it is always a good idea to download the latest stable version. We only need to download one file, which works regardless of the platform (browser, web server, MySQL, or PHP version). For version 3.3, there are two groups of files— english and all-languages. If we need only the English interface, we can download a file whose name contains "english"—for example, phpMyAdmin-3.3.2-english.zip. On the other hand, if we have the need for at least one other language, choosing all-languages would be appropriate.
If we are using a server supporting only PHP4—for which the PHP team has discontinued support since December 31, 2007—the latest stable version of phpMyAdmin is not a good choice for download. I recommend using version 2.11.x, which is the latest branch that supports PHP4.
The files offered have various extensions: .zip, .tar.bz2, .tar.gz, .7z. Download a file having an extension for which you have the corresponding extractor. In the Windows world, .zip is the most universal file format, although the files are bigger than .gz or .bz2 files (which are common in the Linux/Unix world). The .7z extension denotes a 7-Zip file, which is a format that achieves a higher compression ratio than the other formats offered—an extractor is available at http://www.7-zip.org. In the following examples, we will assume that the chosen file was phpMyAdmin-3.3.2-all-languages.zip.
After clicking on the appropriate file, the nearest mirror site will be chosen by Sourceforge.net. The file will start to download, and we can save it on our computer.
The next step depends on the platform you are using. The following sections detail the procedures for some common platforms. You may proceed directly to the relevant section.
Using the File explorer, we double-click the phpMyAdmin-3.3.2-all-languages.zip file that we just downloaded on the Windows machine. A file extractor will start, showing us all of the scripts and directories inside a main phpMyAdmin-3.3.2-all-languages directory.
Use whatever mechanism your file extractor offers to save all the files, including subdirectories, to some location on your workstation. Here, we have chosen C:\.Therefore, a C:\phpMyAdmin-3.3.2-all-languages directory has been created for extraction.
Now, it's time to transfer the entire directory structure C:\phpMyAdmin-3.3.2-all-languages to the web server in our webspace. We use our favorite SFTP or FTP software, or the web control panel, for the transfer.
The exact directory under which we transfer phpMyAdmin may vary. It could be our public_html directory or another directory to which we usually transfer web documents. For further instructions about the exact directory to be used, or the best way to transfer the directory structure, we can consult our host provider's help desk.
After the transfer is complete, these files can be removed from our Windows machine as they are no longer needed.
Let's say we chose phpMyAdmin-3.3.2-all-languages.tar.gz and downloaded it directly to some directory on the Linux server. We move it to our web server's document root directory (for example, /var/www/html) or to one of its subdirectories (for example, /var/www/html/utilities). We then extract it by issuing the following shell command or by using any graphical file extractor that our window manager offers:
tar -xzvf phpMyAdmin-3.3.2-all-languages.tar.gz
We must ensure that the permissions and ownership of the directory and files are appropriate for our web server. The web server user or group must be able to read them.
The procedure here is similar to that described in the Installation on a remote server using a Windows machine section, except that the target directory will be under our DocumentRoot (for Apache) or our wwwroot (for IIS). Of course, we do not need to transfer anything after modifications are made to config.inc.php (described in the next section), as the directory is already on the webspace.
Apache is usually run as a service. Hence, we have to ensure that the user under whom the service is running has normal read privileges to access our newly-created directory. The same principle applies to IIS, which uses the IUSR_machinename user. This user must have read access to the directory. You can adjust permissions in the Security/permissions tab of the directory's properties.