Installing Elgg on Elementary OS Latest

Elgg is a free open source social networking engine that is written in PHP. It is ideal for developing social networks, intranets, and community sites. This tutorial will guide you through the process of installing Elgg on Elementary OS Latest.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, you need to make sure that your system meets the following prerequisites:

• A LAMP/MAMP/WAMP stack installed (Linux, Mac or Windows respectively).
• PHP version 5.6 or later with the following extensions: gd, mysql, mysqli, and pdo_mysql.
• Apache's mod_rewrite module must be enabled.

Step 1: Download and Extract Elgg

Firstly, you need to download the latest version of Elgg from the official Elgg website. The download link for the latest version is https://elgg.org/.

After downloading Elgg, extract the zip file to your web server document root directory. For example, if you're using XAMPP on Windows, the location would be C:\xampp\htdocs. If you're using MAMP on Mac, the location would be /Applications/MAMP/htdocs.

Step 2: Create a MySQL Database

Next, you need to create a MySQL database for your Elgg installation. You can do this using the following steps:

1. Open up your MySQL command prompt. On most Linux and Mac systems, you can simply type mysql in a terminal window. On Windows, you can use the MySQL console or the Command Prompt.
2. Type in CREATE DATABASE elgg_database; where elgg_database is the name of your database.
3. Create a new user and grant appropriate privileges by typing the following command:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON elgg_database.* TO 'elgg_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Replace elgg_database, elgg_user, and password with your chosen values. Make sure to keep a note of these values as they'll be needed later in the installation process.

Step 3: Set up Configuration Files

Next, we need to set up the configuration files for Elgg.

1. Navigate to the Elgg installation directory in your web server document root.
2. Rename the file htaccess_dist to .htaccess.
3. Rename the file elgg-config-dist.php to elgg-config.php.
4. Open elgg-config.php in a text editor and enter the details of your MySQL database in the following fields:

$CONFIG->dbusername = 'elgg_user';
$CONFIG->dbpassword = 'password';
$CONFIG->dbname = 'elgg_database';

Save and close the file.

Step 4: Finish the Installation

Now, we can finish the installation process by going to the Elgg installation URL in your web browser.

1. Navigate to http://localhost/elgg/ (or whatever your installation directory is named) in your web browser.
2. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation. You'll be prompted to create an admin account and choose your site's name and description.

That's it! You've successfully installed Elgg on your Elementary OS Latest system. You can now start customizing your site and inviting users.

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