Installing Wolf CMS

Wolf CMS Introduction

Hi All!  We recently found out about Wolf CMS and have been playing with it all week.  This came about as a result of us wanting to reduce the overall footprint of our sites, finding a smaller CMS, and just supporting free software in general.  We also really like the fact that the founder is into bushidō, which is really cool.

Anyway, we decided to do a quick how to install for those who need some help.

First thing you need to do is get a domain installed on a Linux/*nix server.  Working from cPanel is preferable just because it is somewhat of a standard environment.  Once your domain is setup you want to make sure that you have FTP access and a local copy of Wolf CMS (download from the website.)

Now we are ready to go.

How to Install Wolf CMS

Start by setting up a database and database user for WolfCMS.  Choose whatever name you want but it should really define what it is, something with wolf or CMS in it in my opinion.

Create the Database

Enter Database Information

Add the User to the Database

Check All Move On..

Ok now you have your database set up.  You saved your database username and password, right?  Write it down and move on.

Now we are ready to do the transfer.  Fire up your trusty old FTP client and log into your domain.  Switch directory over to public_html and make sure you have Wolf CMS locally.  Drag and drop (or enter command line commands) local files into public_html.  Being that it is about 3Mb it should only take a few seconds.

A Very Tiny CMS

FTP the files to your server

Next, you want to delete your local .htaccess file and rename ._htaccess to .htaccess.  You can do this from your FTP client.

rename the htaccess file

Now go on over to your web browser and enter in the domain of where you just dropped the files.  You should come across a screen that looks like this.

wolf CMS installation requirements screen

As you can see from my example, not everything is present…but that’s ok!  We only need support for MySQL.  So now we move on…

Enter the Requested Details

Make sure to enter your own details, and not mine :).  Everything should be self explanatory.  If you get stumped on any of this information, you probably have no business being here.  Nevertheless, once you feel like all of your information is saved correctly, PRESS ON!

Great JOB, but wait, there’s more!

Now run the security check (open in a new window so you can see this screen.  You won’t see it again).  If you’ve done your homework everything should be ok.

Well, now it’s time to dust off your Linux knowledge.  Log into your local shell (FTP might work) and enter the Wolf CMS home directory.  Do a chmod 444 config.php and you are good to go.  Then do a chmod -R a-w wolf to the wolf directory and remove the docs directory by doing a rm -rf docs.  It felt good to have a reason to be back behind the command line  :)

All done!  Congrats, you have successfully installed Wolf CMS.  It was a great experience using this.  If you really want to leverage the power of Wolf CMS I do advise you to have a working knowledge of HTML/CSS and preferably PHP as well.