Local Installation

You might want to install Automad first on your local Mac or Windows computer to get familiar with the system or start developing your site. Like any other CMS, Automad requires a webserver to be running. The easiest way to achive this, is to install a complete webserver package on your computer - for example XAMPP. The following steps will guide you through that process.

Installing XAMPP

1. Go to the XAMPP website, download the right package for your operating system and start the installer. There should be also a video tutorial on the XAMPP landing page which visualizes the whole process.
2. Make sure that the GD PHP extension is enable and working properly by following these steps precisely:
   • Open the XAMPP control panel
   • Click on the Config button for Apache and open the php.ini file
   • In the php.ini search for ;extension=gd (note the ; at the beginning) and remove the ; in order to enable the extension
   • Save and close the file
   • Start Apache using the Start button

Installing Automad

1. After successfully installing and starting your new webserver, navigate to the document root folder called htdocs. On Windows computers it is normally located at

   C:\xampp\htdocs
   

   While on a Mac, it can be found here

   /Applications/XAMPP/htdocs
   

2. Create a new directory for your website, for example my-site inside the htdocs directory

3. Download Automad and extract the .zip file in the directory you created in the step before
4. In case you have a Mac, you will have to recursively set the correct permissions for your my-site directory. Take a look at this Stack Overflow post for detailed instructions
5. Navigate to http://localhost/my-site in your browser to verify that the installation is working
6. Naviagte to http://localhost/my-site/dashboard to create an user account

When your test phase is over you simply have to copy your Automad installation over to your webspace to get your site online.