How to Install Invoice Ninja on Windows 11

This tutorial will guide you through the steps to install Invoice Ninja on a Windows 11 operating system. Invoice Ninja is an open-source invoicing and accounting software that allows businesses to create, send, and manage invoices.

Before starting, you will need:

• A web browser
• PHP 7.3 or later
• A web server such as Apache or IIS
• MySQL or MariaDB

Step 1: Download and Extract Invoice Ninja

1. Go to the Invoice Ninja website and click on the "Download" button.
2. Select the self-hosted option and save the file to your computer.
3. Extract the downloaded files to the desired location on your computer.

Step 2: Configure the Web Server

1. Open the Apache or IIS configuration file.
2. Add the following lines to the server's configuration file before any other virtual hosts:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName invoices.example.com
  DocumentRoot /path/to/invoiceninja/
  <Directory /path/to/invoiceninja/>
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Note: Replace invoices.example.com with your actual domain name and replace /path/to/invoiceninja/ with the path to the Invoice Ninja directory on your computer.

3. Save the configuration and restart the web server.

Step 3: Create a Database

1. Open your MySQL or MariaDB command-line client.
2. Create a new database for Invoice Ninja:

CREATE DATABASE `invoiceninja_db`;

Note: Replace invoiceninja_db with your desired database name.

3. Create a new user and grant privileges to the database:

CREATE USER `invoiceninja_user`@`localhost` IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `invoiceninja_db`.* TO `invoiceninja_user`@`localhost`;

Note: Replace invoiceninja_user with your desired username and replace password with your desired password.

4. Exit the command-line client.

Step 4: Configure Invoice Ninja

1. Open the env.example file located in the Invoice Ninja directory and copy its contents.
2. Create a new file named .env in the Invoice Ninja directory and paste the copied contents into the file.
3. Update the following variables in the .env file:

APP_URL=http://invoices.example.com

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=invoiceninja_db
DB_USERNAME=invoiceninja_user
DB_PASSWORD=password

Note: Replace http://invoices.example.com with your actual domain name and replace the database variables with the values you used in Step 3.

4. Save the .env file.

Step 5: Install Invoice Ninja

1. Open a terminal or command prompt and navigate to the Invoice Ninja directory.
2. Install the dependencies using the following command:

composer install --no-dev

3. Generate the application key:

php artisan key:generate --force

4. Run the migration:

php artisan migrate

5. Seed the database:

php artisan db:seed

Step 6: Access Invoice Ninja

1. Open a web browser and navigate to your Invoice Ninja domain, for example, http://invoices.example.com.
2. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation process and start using Invoice Ninja.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Invoice Ninja on Windows 11!

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