In this article I will explain how to download and install the Blog software Nucleus on your server. Nucleus is customisable in every way and you can have different authors using the same blog. I will be installing onto the Host4Profit.com server as this article is aimed at those who use H4P.

Note: If you use a different host company most, if not all the instructions will hold true. Just the terminology will be a bit different.

The only requirements are that you have a free MySQL database on your server and that your server runs PHP4+. If you are installing onto Host4Profit servers then you meet the requirements.

First of all download the software from http://nucleuscms.org/download.php onto your desktop and then unzip it making sure you keep the directory structure.

Next you will need to upload everything onto your server into a directory of your choice. I recommend using the name nucleus as then you will know what the directory is. To upload the files to your server you will need to use a FTP program, your File Manager on your server, or if you use Windows XP its built in FTP program.

Once all the files are uploaded onto your server you will need to change the permission of the file config.php to 666. To do this, find the file config.php and to the right of the name you will see 3 numbers. Click on that and in the new window, type 666 and enter.

Before we go on you will need to set up a Database. If using Host4Profit it is an easy process. You will have to log into your WEBePanel and then click on the MySQL database icon to get started. Follow the instructions on that page and write down the database name (usually part or all of your domain name) and the password.

Now open a new browser window and type in the address to the install.php in your Nucleus directory like this http://www.yourdomain.com/nucleus/install.php

You are presented with some information and a set of instructions, one of which is to change the permissions of the config.php to 666. When the installation is complete you will need to change the permissions back to 444.

Next you need to enter some information to set up the MySQL database. Nucleus can normally set this up for you automatically but as we are using Host4Profit, Nucleus has a problem which is why we created the database already. All we have to do is fill in the blanks as so-

In the Hostname box you put - localhost

User Name the name you wrote down earlier. The default is yourdomain_com with 2 or 3 added depending on how many databases you have used.

Password The password that you wrote down.

After that when you scroll down the installation page there are a lot of directories and addresses that are already set up for you. The ones you should take note of are the ones that start with http:// as these are the urls that you will use to access the admin section and to read your blog.

Following on from there, you are presented with the Administrator User data. You need to fill this in and remember the user name and password that you use.

Note: The username and password are different to the ones you used to set up the database. These are your admin details.

After that you just need to name your blog and give it a short name. Then click the Install button.

Once you have installed the Nucleus program, you need to do two things.

1. Go into your File Manager and change the permissions to config.php to 444

2. Delete the file install.php

There is a wealth of information about using Nucleus both in the nucleus directory and at the http://nucleuscms.org/ web site. You will also find a support forum, downloadable skins and plugins lot of helpful information.