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Before I start telling you about the modifications I’ve made to Textpattern for my Gab section, I thought I would begin with (hopefully) a quick explanation for the installation of Textpattern.

System Requirements: First, you will need hosting that offers PHP and one MySQL database. To achieve “clean URLs”, you must have access to your .htaccess file. If you are unsure, ask your hosting provider.

Download Textpattern from their website. As of this writing, 1.0rc1 is the current version. Take the zipped file and unzip it. This will produce a folder called ‘current’ which holds all the important goods.

Unless you want Textpattern in the root directory, create a folder on your website. We will use a folder called ‘blog’ for this example. Take the contents from ‘current’ and place it into your ‘blog’ folder.

Use an existing database on your site or create a new one. If you use a pre-existing database, the Textpattern installation will insert the following tables: textpattern, txp_category, txp_css, txp_discuss, txp_discuss_ipban, txp_nonce, txp_form, txp_image, txp_link, txp_log, txp_log_mention, txp_page, txp_plugin, txp_prefs, txp_section, and txp_users.

Open a browser and load http://yourwebsite.com/the_folder_you_created/textpattern/setup.php. Enter your MySQL login, password, server (it is ‘localhost’ 99% of the time), database name, and if you are using multiple installations of Textpattern, but use only one database, you must enter a table prefix. Submit the form.

Code is created. Open /textpattern/config.php.default and replace its contents with this code. Change the name of the file to config.php. Submit this form.

You will be asked for some personal information. I can not help you here. Complete and submit the form.

Cross your fingers. The Textpattern tables for the database should now be created.

IMPORTANT: Delete /textpattern/setup.php at this time! It poses a security risk if left in the site.

Now login and go nuts.

Next time I will show you which personal modifications were done. Also, I will compile a list of helpful Textpattern links.