DotClear is a widely used application which allows you to set up and configure a blog on your website.

It's wise to have a database dedicated to your blog. Let's go crazy, and call it "blog".

If you don't (yet) know how to go about this, please read this tutorial.

You have a choice here. For "neatness'" sake, such applications are generally placed in a folder within the www sub-domain (www.example.com/blog) or in a specific sub-domain of its own (blog.example.com).

Easy! Just make sure the you create a specific folder for the store (as in www.example.com/blog)

Two things to do:

• Configure your server for this sub-domain, as explained in this tutorial.
• Configure your sub-domain to point to the server you have just configured, as explained in this tutorial.

This is the option we will be using in the rest of the tutorial.

To begin with, we need to download it. At the time of writing, the latest version was 1.2.7.1.

Nothing beats the official site to get the initial compressed file. I therefore recommend this link.

Then select the file type you prefer, .zip or .tar.gz.

Now that you've downloaded the file onto your favorite hard drive, decompress it. You now have a folder (let's rename it blog) containing all of the DotClear files.

Launch your favorite FTP client (we recommend FileZilla) and log in as admin onto your server. Then, open the folder corresponding to the VirtualHost you had initially defined.

In our example, the path of the FTP would therefore be:

/srv/d_my-gandai-ai/www/blog.example.com/htdocs

…that is, unless you've changed the initial configuration of the web files. If that's the case, however, I'm assuming you knew what you were doing. :)

At this stage, we can upload the blog files onto your server.

• If you created a blog.example.com kind of virtual host, you will want the blog to come up as the front page (i.e. not within a folder in the sub-domain) and you should therefore upload the content of the blog folder into the htdocs folder of your sub-domain.

• If you're not a fan of sub-domains and prefer a good old example.com/blog, then you need to upload the complete folder into htdocs (or another folder if you want).

For DotClear to configure properly, certain folders and files will need specific rights. In most cases, to change these rights with your FTP client, all you need to do is right-click on the file concerned and chose the right term in the menu (could be Rights, CHMOD, Properties…). Supposing you were using FileZilla, this is how the client would operate:

Right-click the concerned file and select "File Attributes…". The window that has just opened gives you two different methods to change the file rights: boxes to tick and numeric values.

The point of the tutorial not being to teach the numeric values of rights in UNIX, let's just say you can simply replace the numeric value by 777.

The folder that will necessarily need its rights changed is:

Conf

Depending on how much you intend to customize your blog, some more folders and files could also need these specific rights. As you customize your blog, DotClear's administration console will tell you which files need changed rights, and you can use the method described above to do so.

Your DotClear blog is ready to be configured. This is done in your web browser. You need to open the install folder which corresponds to your forum's emplacement.

Still following our initial example, this would be:

blog.example.com/install

Welcome to the first page of your DotClear blog setup. Select a language and don't worry about the "Encoding" menu if you don't know what it is. Click the Go tab to continue the configuration.

DotClear then checks if your configuration is OK for installing the blog. If PHP is properly installed and the conf folder has the appropriate rights as explained just above, DotClear should let you click the Next tab.

Database server or DSN: write localhost.

Database name: Put down the name you had previously defined. In our example, it is called blog.

User name: When you had created the database, you had also created a user with a name you need to indicate here.

Password: … had been specified at the same time as the User name. Can't help you if you've forgotten it!

Table prefixes: Allows you to choose what prefix will be written before the name of each table generated by DotClear. If you don't know what this is, leave the default prefix.

You can now click on the Create tables tab. DotClear should then show you a list of the tables created. Click on the Create User tab to begin configuring the blog's administration.

DotClear will ask you to configure the account of the blog's administrator and create it.

The rest of the configuration is straightforward and you can basically leave all fields with their default values (except Weblog name - that's entirely up to you!).

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a brand new DotClear blog. Should you want more information about how to run and customize your blog, you should consult the official DotClear English speaking forums.