How to Install Drupal

Drupal has made its installation process extremely easy. And there are 2 ways you can follow to install Drupal, both of them will take you less than 5 minutes.

Install Drupal Manually

This probably is the most common method to install Drupal, in which you will need to create the Database and the database user, run Drupal installer and then follow the "On-Screen" instruction to finish the installation. See below for the details:

1. Download Latest Drupal code (zip file) from Drupal Project
2. Extract the compress file, and upload them to the web folder (could be the subfolder)
3. Copy {drupal}/sites/default/default.settings.php to {drupal}/sites/default/settings.php
4. Create the database for Drupal, let's take MySQL as an example, you will need to create a MySQL database, and a MySQL users, and then grant "SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER" privilege from the Drupal database to the Drupal user. These 2 data will be required in Step 4).
5. Run drupal installer, and then follow the on-screen instruction to finish the installation process. Drupal has an automated installation script that automatically populates database tables and sets the correct settings in settings.php file. And Drupal installer will be automatically launched when you first time visit your drupal directory via url.
6. Done! You have owned a Drupal site. 

Install Drupal via Fantastico

Fantastico De Luxe is the leading autoinstaller for cPanel servers. It integrates with your cPanel and gives you the ability to install multiple instances of latest version of these scripts.

If your web hosting vendor provide you with Fantastico, then you can setup a Drupal site by some simple clicks. Below is Drupal installation screen from ANHosting. Click ththe "New Installation" , and you will be required to iinput the directory Drupal will be installed to, and choose your administrator user name, password (these 2 will be used to maintain your drupal site after installation) and admin email. Finally, click the "Install Drupal" button, Fantastico will get everything setup for you.

In this method, you have no need to manually create the MySQL database and the database user, Fantastico autoinstaller will do everything for you.

Summary

Although installing Drupal with Fantastic looks much easier, in most case, we still recommend you to install the Drupal manually. The key reasons are:

• Mannual installation of Drupal is not complex. You can follow our introduction in above and get a Drupal site setup in soon
• Sometime, the version in Fantastic is not the latest one. Take above picture as an example, the latest version was Drupal 6.4 at the time we wrote this instruction, but the system will give you Drupal 6.3. This is not bad in most case since you have no need to install the latest one, but if you really want to get something up to date, then manually download the code from Drupal official site and install it manually will be your best choice.