Pre-requisites

• A working HTTP web server eg. Apache, IIS.
• PHP installed on the web server.
• A working MySQL server - with innodb tables enabled (see notes below)
• Adobe Acrobat Reader - or another PDF reader for viewing the PDF reports before printing them out.

Important Notes

• One critical aspect of the PHP installation is the setting of session.auto_start in the php.ini file. Some rpm distributions of PHP have the default setting of session.auto_start = 1. This starts a new session at the beginning of each script. However, this makes it impossible to instantiate any class objects that the system relies on. Classes are used extensively by this system. When sessions are required they are started by the system and this setting of session.auto_start can and should be set to 0.
• For security reasons both Register Globals and Magic Quotes php settings should be set to Off. When FrontAccounting is used with www server running php as Apache module, respective flags are set in .htaccess file. When your server uses CGI interface to PHP you should set magic_quotes_gpc = 0 and register_globals = 0 in php.ini file.
• Innodb tables must be enabled in the MySQL server. These tables allow database transactions which are a critical component of the software. This is enabled by default in the newer versions of MySQL. If you need to enable it yourself, consult the MySQL manual.
• FrontAccounting is implemented and tested with MySQL. Generally it should work with other databases, but this is not supported in any way at the moment.

Copying all the project files to the correct directory

• You must obviously have downloaded the project archive to be reading this file.
• All the files inside this archive should be copied to a directory under the web server root directory.
• For example, create a folder called /account, and extract the archive into this folder.

Installation Steps (automatic, recommended)

1. If you have the option to create multiple databases on your host, create one, fi. frontacc, otherwise write down the database name for your account. At the same time look up the username and password for the database. You will need these informations during the wizard install.
2. Enter your_url/account/install (or whatever directory you entered). This will run the install wizard, setup a drill company and populating with initial data. You can later on create your own real company. It is a good idea to get familiar with the system before starting your own company. 
3. After successfully install, remove or rename your install directory for safety reasons. You don't need it any more.

Installation Steps (manuel, for advanced users, not recommended)

1. Creating the Database

   1. NOTE : As FrontAccounting is still heavily under development, the database structure will ALWAYS change between releases, so if you have a database that you created for a previous release of FrontAccounting, it WILL NOT WORK after installing a new release. 
      Please look in the file Update.html for how to handle this.
   2. We strongly suggest using a GUI to manage your database(s) and database users. If you don’t have any, download phpMyAdmin.
   3. Create a database with a name of your choice. The default in config_db.php is ‘frontacc’, but of course you can select whatever name you desire.
   4. Populate the database you have created. There are two scripts are provided to populate the database (both inside the folder /sql) :
      1. en_US-demo.sql. This has a minimal amount of demonstration data set up so that transactions can be tried to see how the system works.
      2. en_US-new.sql. This script has only the basic data necessary to start a new company system off. If you wish to set up your company on FrontAccounting then this is the script to use.
   5. Now that the database is created you will need to set up a database user to access this database. DO NOT USE THE USER ‘ROOT’. Set up a new user and give that user full privileges over the database ‘frontacc’.
   6. After successfully install, remove or rename your install directory your_url/account/install (or whatever directory you entered) for safety reasons. You don't need it any more.

2. Editing config_db.php

   1. config_db.php contains connection information for the database. These must be set to your local settings or you will not be able to access FrontAccounting.
   2. FrontAccounting allows multiple connections, you can enter as many connections as you have separate entities (most people will use only one).
   3. $db_connections is an array of connections – for each connection :
   4. “name” is the name of the connection, this is the name that will be displayed to the user
   5. “host” is the computer IP address or name where the database is. The default is localhost assuming that the web server is also the sql server.
   6. “dbuser” is the user name under which the database should be accessed. NB, again, do not use the user ROOT. A user with appropriate privileges must be set up.
   7. “dbpassword” is the password for “dbuser”. You would have entered this when you created “dbuser”.
   8. “dbname” is the name of the database. The provided scripts use the name - frontaccount.
   9. “tbpref” is the table prefix for the tables. If you only have access to one database, you must use table prefix to separate the companies. Table prefix is set by a table prefix counter inside config_db.php, fi. 0_ for the first company.

 Logging In For the First Time

1. Pleae ensure that the folder /company/0 on the server is writable.
2. Open a browser and enter the URL for the web server directory where FrontAccounting is installed.
3. Enter the user name:  'admin'
4. Enter the password: 'password'
5. (NB : enter without quotation marks).
6. You can set up additional user accounts from the System Setup tab. Be careful not to delete the demonstration user until a new user has been set up. If there are no users defined the next time you try to login you won't be able to. The only way then to create a user to login with is to manually edit the SQL table "users" to insert a user.

Setting Up Company Specific Data

1. All the standing configuration data is defined from the Setup tab and each link should be reviewed to enter appropriate data for the business. Setup wizards that guide you through this process has been implemented and we strongly recommend you to use this approach, see Installation steps (automatic, recommended) .

Troubleshooting

1. If FrontAccounting is installed locally, you may have the session save path not set correctly. Normally this is set in your php.ini (for Windows). The entry is called session.save_path. Make sure this is set to a directory that actually exists. The default is set to /tmp, which may not be valid.
2. If you are installing FrontAccounting onto a shared server, you may have to set the session save path within FrontAccounting. At the top of  /includes/session.inc you will find this line :
3. Uncomment this line and set the path to a directory that exists on your server. Make sure that you have read/write privileges on this directory.