Installing Zotonic

Before beginning installation, please be sure your system meets the install-requirements.

At the end of this page, you should have a bare-bones Zotonic running, without any sites in it.

There are multiple ways of installing Zotonic, depending on what you want and

1. Installing from a release .zip archive
2. Installing from git
3. Installing from the Debian package
4. Installation with the one-line script for Debian-based systems

For most people, Installing from a release .zip archive should be the best option.

Installing from a release .zip archive

Zotonic versions are released as .zip files from the official download page. This installation method gets you the officially supported version.

1. Download the latest release as a .zip from https://github.com/zotonic/zotonic/releases, and unzip it in a folder called zotonic.

2. Type make in the root of Zotonic (there where the Makefile is located).

3. When the build is done, start Zotonic in debug mode:

   bin/zotonic debug
   

4. You see Zotonic starting up, lots of messages passing by.

5. Now point your browser to:

   http://localhost:8000/
   

6. You now should see a welcome message, “Powered by Zotonic”. The site you are looking at is called zotonic_status, which is the default site for when there are no “real” sites configured yet. note: don’t bother to log in yet on this screen; that will come later (if you’re interested, see The Zotonic “status” site)

7. Stop Zotonic, by pressing ctrl-c twice in the terminal.

8. OK! Now continue with Adding your first site.

Installing from git

If you want to run the latest version of Zotonic or run on one of its release branches, get a copy of the source tree from github.com and run Zotonic from there.

1. Use git to clone a copy of the Zotonic source tree:

   git clone git://github.com/zotonic/zotonic.git
   cd zotonic
   

   You are now in the master branch, which contains the current development version of Zotonic. To switch to the more stable 0.12 version, switch to the release-0.12.x branch:

   git checkout release-0.12.x
   

2. Type make in the root of Zotonic (there where the Makefile is located).

3. When the build is done, start Zotonic in debug mode:

   bin/zotonic debug
   

4. You see Zotonic starting up, lots of messages passing by.

5. Now point your browser to:

   http://localhost:8000/
   

6. You now should see a welcome message, “Powered by Zotonic”. The site you are looking at is called zotonic_status, which is the default site for when there are no “real” sites configured yet. note: don’t bother to log in yet on this screen; that will come later (if you’re interested, see The Zotonic “status” site)

7. Stop Zotonic, by pressing ctrl-c twice in the terminal.

8. OK! Now continue with Adding your first site.

Installing from the Debian package

Official Zotonic releases are packaged as a .deb package. This packages installs all prerequisites, creates a zotonic user, and sets up a Zotonic instance running from /var/lib/zotonic/zotonic. This package works for both Ubuntu and Debian distributions, and is the preferred way of running Zotonic on Debian for production purposes.

Ubuntu users can do the following to install this package:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:arjan-scherpenisse/zotonic

Debian users need to add the following line to their /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/arjan-scherpenisse/zotonic/ubuntu lucid main

Then, run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install zotonic

Now, point your browser to http://localhost:8000/ and make sure you see the Powered by Zotonic welcome screen. Then, head on to Adding your first site.

Installation with the one-line script for Debian-based systems

Note

This script installs the latest development version, so be careful not to use it on a production system.

For a one-liner install of Zotonic and its dependencies you can use the following script:

wget -O - https://raw.github.com/zotonic/zotonic/master/zotonic_install | bash

This will install all dependencies, clone the Zotonic git repository, create a zotonic user, add the necessary database permissions, and compile and start Zotonic.

Now, point your browser to http://localhost:8000/ and make sure you see the Powered by Zotonic welcome screen. Then, head on to Adding your first site.