very beginning

[Tracy]

I have just downloaded the program and am really green with this all. I just read a post saying that I cannot use CMS ms to edit my existing web sites only to build new ones with it. IS THIS CORRECT?

Now for starters, I guess I thought that I would be able to play around with the program to see what it does but nothing makes sense so Do I have to upload it to my host site first? If so where, do I upload the whole folder to the www on my server?

[Vin]

Basically, you need a server with PHP and MySQL running - typically Apache, or IIS or Lighttpd - see http://wiki.cmsmadesimple.org/index.php/User_Handbook/Installation/Requirements.

If you want to play around with cmsms, I'd recommend the 'live install' on opensourcecms.com. When you've made your mind, you may install some WAMP/LAMP server installation (a server with apache, mysql and php) on your computer (like EasyPHP, XAMPP, or WAMP5 I heard, too), and uncompress the downloaded package into the pages root folder (mostly htdocs). After turning on your local server, navigate to http://localhost/index.php or http://localhost/install/index.php in your web browser, and follow the install instructions (like in documentation). This way you'll be able to test your site safely on your computer. Or you can install it right from scratch on your host - again, see docs.

[Tracy]

Thankyou very much for your reply, I have been playing with this for hours now. I have been successful getting it uploading but I am stuck on getting the correct database information in there. I have all kinds of senarios, I am assuming it should be the database name, user and pass name I set up. I can't get past this installation #3 now. I'm pretty fed up with it actually. Any ideas?

Ok, I've gotten thru now onto the next step!