Installing FreeScout on Windows 10

In this tutorial, we will walk through the steps required to install FreeScout on Windows 10 operating system. FreeScout is a free and open-source helpdesk software. It allows the user to manage customer support tickets, track their status and resolution, and communicate with customers via email.

Prerequisites

Before installing FreeScout, ensure that you have the following prerequisites installed:

• PHP 7.3 or above
• MySQL or MariaDB
• Composer

Step 1: Download and Install Composer

Composer is the package manager for PHP, which helps in managing dependencies required by FreeScout. To install Composer, follow these steps:

1. Go to https://getcomposer.org/ in your web browser.

2. Click on the "Download Composer" button.

3. Follow the installation process as prompted by the installer.

4. Once the installation is complete, open a command prompt/terminal window and type composer -v to verify that Composer was installed correctly.

Step 2: Download and Install FreeScout

To download FreeScout, follow these steps:

1. Go to https://github.com/freescout-helpdesk/freescout in your web browser.

2. Click on the "Clone or download" button and select "Download ZIP".

3. Extract the downloaded ZIP file to a location of your choice.

4. Open a command prompt/terminal window and navigate to the extracted folder.

5. Execute the following command to install the dependencies:

composer install

6. Create a new MySQL database for FreeScout.

7. Rename the .env.example file to .env and update the database settings accordingly:

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=your_database_host
DB_PORT=your_database_port
DB_DATABASE=your_database_name
DB_USERNAME=your_database_username
DB_PASSWORD=your_database_password

8. Generate an application key by running the following command:

php artisan key:generate

9. Run the following command to create the required tables:

php artisan migrate

10. FreeScout is now installed and ready to be used. To start the server, run the following command:

php artisan serve

11. Open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8000 to access the FreeScout installation.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed FreeScout on your Windows 10 operating system. You can now configure the application to suit your business requirements.

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