Revision [1430]

This is an old revision of Shared made by CombatWombat on 2009-04-01 19:09:57.

 

This help file is a work in progress, designed to help you with your Shared Hosting service. Please contribute regarding your host.

What is Shared Hosting?

Shared Hosting is where you rent space from an online provider of web hosting. They look after the servers, and you pay them for the space and bandwidth and services bundled. It is cheaper than running your own host, and provides an easy entry-level to the world of running a web server. In relation to webERP, you need to have a hosting company that provides PHP and MySQL, preferably in late versions (5+ and 4.2+ respectively). You need to have enough storage to host webERP and any extras you decide to add(currently that won't take you over 10MB for webERP). You also need access to your MySQL server through PHPMyAdmin or through command line interface (commonly called SSH). The whole reason that it is called Shared Hosting is that you are just one of many accounts on that server, although the company may run many servers, so you share the resources with everyone else. Occasionally that means that a bad script on some else's hosting account can drag or crash the server you rely on. But you get what you pay for.

Should I use a Shared Host?

Can you afford to run your own, or run a VPS (Virtual Private Server) at a host? Check out the prices. If you can, then this is the way to go. It gives you more control over everything that happens. Conversely you also need to have a clue as to what you are doing.

I am on a Shared Host and cannot get webERP working

Some hosting providers don't provide a standard environment for PHP/MySQL. You need to figure out what to do to overcome the limitation of their environment. This might involve looking at their help system, or finding others who have managed to get webERP running on this host.

Common Issues
The most common issue I have seen is where the PHP system requires the following file in each application root directory(eg webERP/):

register_globals = off
magic_quotes_gpc = off

The file needs to be named php.ini or php5.ini or similar.

This "fun" one is due to the Apache web server tripping over the file called .htaccess in the webERP root directory. Remove that file. The htacess file is a configuration file for Apache web server, but not every host accepts every command within them.

Which Web Host is BEST?
Hmmm, how long is the piece of string I am holding? Seriously, you need to do the research yourself. Price, reputation, reliability, speed, backups, ease-of-use, support, locality, legality, features, and that always important "x-factor", are what differentiates web hosting companies. It is impossible for anyone else to tell you what you need here. BUT it would be a good idea for you, our webERP community, to add your webhosting company, and the "gotchas" you came across.

Web Host Company & Gotchas
BlueHost: Requires removal of ".htaccess" file from webERP, and adding "php.ini" file as per above.
1and1.com: Requires custom php.ini:
allow_url_fopen = on;
memory_limit = 40M;
upload_max_filesize = 20M;
max_execution_time = 50000;
browscap = /usr/local/lib/browscap.ini;
register_globals = off;
error_reporting = (E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_WARNING); url_rewriter.tags =?a=href,area=href,frame=src,form=fakeentry,fieldset=?;
magic_quotes_gpc = off;

User Experiences
From greg2420:

I did this for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I did my setup on
HostGator.com but GoDaddy.com should be similar. Please excuse me if this
is too basic but basic steps for me worked something like this:

• Go to Control Panel for your web host. Note: Your web host should provide
Linux / Apache / MySQL / PHP (LAMP) as part of your web hosting setup.
• Use Control Panel icon for MySQL database or MySQL Wizard to create a
blank database, user id and password. Your database name will also be your
company name. So, keep this in mind when you name your database.
• Set up the domain or sub-domain with your webhost that you will be using
for webERP. Record the file directory that will be the application root for
webERP. For example, the file directory could be: /public_html/weberproot
• Use FileZilla FTP or other File Manager tool and copy in all webERP files
into the application root for your instance of webERP. Be sure to preserve
the sub-directory structure.
• Use your FTP or File Manager tool and open up one of the following files.
Files will be within the sub-directory structure at a location like this:
/public_root/weberproot/sql/mysql
o weberp-demo.sql (installs database with demo data)
o weberp-new.sql (installs database without demo data)
• Return to Control Panel and select phpMyAdmin. Select the database that
you created previously.
• In your FTP or File Manager tool, Highlight and copy the contents of the
.sql file into memory. Go to phpMyAdmin and the SQL tab for your database.
Paste in the contents of the .sql file and select the GO button within
phpMyAdmin to run the code. Verify that the SQL Script code has completed
successfully.
o If your webhost requires the sql scripts to be run in smaller sections,
please be sure to put this command at the top of each section of SQL script
to prevent errors.
o SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 0;
• Using your FTP or File Manager tool, create a subdirectory with the same
name as your database and company. For example:
/public_html/weberproot/companies/dbname. Your logo file (logo.jpg) goes
into this directory.
• Go to your web browser and enter the URL or your domain or sub-domain.
• Enter company (database) name, user name, and password and select the
Login button. For initial values, enter the user name of 'admin' and
password 'weberp'
• In the application root (such as /public_html/weberproot), find the
config.php file and make edits as needed.

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