Installation Guide

This guide walks you through installing AncestryCodex on your own server.

System Requirements

Before installing, ensure your server meets these requirements:

Required PHP Extensions

• intl - Internationalization functions
• mbstring - Multibyte string handling
• json - JSON encoding/decoding
• curl - HTTP requests (for API features)
• gd or imagick - Image processing
• fileinfo - File type detection

Installation Steps

Step 1: Download AncestryCodex

Download the latest release or clone the repository:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ancestrycodex/ancestrycodex.git

# Or download and extract the zip
wget https://github.com/ancestrycodex/ancestrycodex/archive/main.zip
unzip main.zip

Step 2: Configure Web Server

Point your web server's document root to the public directory.

Apache Virtual Host Example:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName yourdomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/ancestrycodex/public

    <Directory /var/www/ancestrycodex/public>
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ancestrycodex_error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ancestrycodex_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Step 3: Set Permissions

Ensure the web server can write to required directories:

# Set ownership
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/ancestrycodex

# Set directory permissions
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/ancestrycodex
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/ancestrycodex/writable

Step 4: Configure Environment

Copy the environment file and configure your settings:

# Copy the example environment file
cp env .env

# Edit the configuration
nano .env

Key settings to configure:

# Application
CI_ENVIRONMENT = production
app.baseURL = 'https://yourdomain.com/'

# Encryption
encryption.key = 'your-random-32-character-key-here'

Step 5: Enable SSL (Recommended)

We strongly recommend using HTTPS. Use Let's Encrypt for free SSL certificates:

sudo certbot --apache -d yourdomain.com

Post-Installation

Create Admin Account

After installation, visit your site and register the first account. The first registered user automatically becomes the administrator.

Verify Installation

Check that everything is working:

1. Visit your domain in a browser
2. Register an admin account
3. Log in and access the Admin Settings
4. Configure your site name and preferences

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

// In public/index.php, add at the top:
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);