Install on Windows

Windows Prerequisites¶

Installation instructions are given for the XAMPP default install environment only. WAMPP will also work if you prefer it. The steps will be a little different.

Downloading software and preparing your system¶

Download - XAMPP
Install XAMPP

Note

You need to run MariaDB 10 and PHP 7.2, if there are various XAMPP options available, get the one with these package versions!!

Download - OpenCATS-0.9.6-FULL. You can not install this yet.
Extract the file to C:xampp\htdocs

Start Xampp¶

Click the Windows start button and type xampp
Hit enter. This will open the XAMPP control panel.
On the right side of Apache and MySQL, click start for each one.

Note

ONLY start the Apache and MySql services. You do NOT need any of the other services.

Stop the apache service (lower right corner, right click XAMPP, stop apache)
Start the apache service

OPTIONAL - Renaming your OpenCATS directory¶

The current default directory name for the OpenCATS files is OpenCATS-0.9.6. This will result in the web address in your browser being http://localhost/OpenCATS-0.9.6

If you want to rename the main OpenCATS directory to something else, you can do it now.

Simply navigate to C:\xampp\htdocs
Right click on the OpenCATS directory
Click rename
Rename the directory whatever you want (example: ATS)

Now, to access it, your browser address will be http://localhost/ATS

Launch phpMyAdmin¶

In your browser, go to: http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

Note

If phpmyadmin does not load in this screen, stop and start your apache service again per the instructions above.

On the left side, click new to create a new database

In the box labelled database name type opencats.
Hit create

NOTE: The default encoding for new databases in MariaDB is latin-1 which will have problems with non-english characters. If you will encounter any non-english characters, please create your databases and select UTF-8 encoding and collation; CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATION utf8_general_ci;

You should now see “opencats” listed among the databases on the left.

Click the opencats database
In the top row of tabs, on the right side of the screen, click privileges
Click add user account

User name, make sure use text field is selected, in the empty box next to it type opencats
Host name: In the first box, select local from the drop-down options. The second box should say localhost
Type opencats for the database password twice
In the “database for user account section”, confirm that the third checkbox Grant all privileges on database "opencats" is checked.
Scroll down to the bottom and click go