CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Still struggling to get civiCRM installed on a Joomla setup on a ThinkHost shared server.

Thinkhost has the following limits, which civiCRM bumps against:

* Any process that requires more than 0.50 MB of memory space, more than 0.10 CPU seconds or uses more than 0.10% of any available system resources at any time or otherwise threatens the stability of the server.

The thing that really seems to use the most resources in the install is writing files from the install directory to .../administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/

I tried removing many files that I judged to be less critical to the install and then FTPing them in place afterward, but that didn't work.  I got it to tell me it had installed successfully, but then I couldn't make it connect to the database and I think it thought there were files missing, like maybe they hadn't been put in a config or settings table?

Now I'm wondering if I can hack the install file and do the file writing in a separate step (or steps).  Perhaps just halt the installation at the appropriate place, FTP everything up manually, and then resume (maybe turning the rest of the installation file into a separate script to run after the files are in place?

I am a fair bit past my expertise level here.

First question is, am I thinking down the right track?  If I don't have the skills to make this hack, I've got someone who knows php (though not civiCRM) who might help me.

Second question is, where exactly is the spot to make the cut?  It looks like the file civicrm.php in the install folder is the one that controls the file writing.  Is this a simple matter, or . . .

If we get this figured out, we might have the basis for creating a more feasible way to install on shared servers that would benefit many.

Did the original install attempt timeout? Blank screen? Errors?

I have one site that is running Civi on Thinkhost servers. It's sluggish, but I don't recall having issues with the installation or operation.

Do a search of the forum for "manual installation" -- I sketched out the details of how to walk through that a while back. May be useful.

Hmmm.  It seems I had followed Lobo's instructions exactly on my earlier attempt.  I didn't need to write a new xml file, as I uploaded everything the xml file mentioned, simply removing some of the items from within the civicrm folder.  The install worked but then hung on the database upgrade script.

THANK YOU!  I was going in this direction, but was somewhat bumbling in the dark and probably wouldn't have made it without your instructions.

The above was for an upgrade.  But I still couldn't get the upgrade script to work so I gave up and am deleting all my civicrm tables and doing a fresh install and will re-import my data from backups (fortunately I hadn't done anything yet except work on my contacts list which is exported so I can re-import).

So for a new civiCRM install, I am including the following additional folders in my initial install instead of ftping them up later.
packages/data
packages/Date
packages/DB
packages/PEAR
packages/PHP
packages/PHPgettext
CRM/contact
CRM/Event
CRM/Contribute
CRM/Member
CRM/Mailing
CRM/Grant
CRM/Plege

Note that I may be including in the first installation some files I don't need to by including everything in these folders (in case you have more restrictive limits than I)

I am pleased to report that this worked and civiCRM appears to be working!! Thus ends months and months of struggle!

An additional note, in case it's helpful to someone:

In order to import my contacts database (about 2,000 names), I had to split it into parts (750 or so names seemed to work.  1,400 did not) and do more than one import.

Well, if I'd *known* before hand what I was getting into, I may well have made different choices.  I didn't realize it might be this difficult.  And a fair amount of the time can be chalked up to learning more about servers, hosts, and so on. 

Hours in total?  Well, this time around I probably spent 3 weeks, more or less full time.  That's on the install and not the setting up which counts as administration.  And not on civiMail, which is coming.  I tried multiple approaches, spent a lot of time learning.

How did I balance this?  Well, my fledgling little organization simply cannot afford $100 a month, which seems to be the going rate for the next level of services.  Simply not an option.  Basically I wanted this, wanted to be able to use a good system like civiCRM.  I kept looking at other options, kept coming back to this.  So I put in the time.  I'm not getting paid on this.  Some additional motivation came because I thought I might find something that would make civiCRM more accessible to others, and I believe in what it can be.

Internal staff?  That's me.  I have aspirations of creating profiles for volunteers to enter and for users to update their information themselves.  So far that's just in the future.  Tonight I'm working on a newsletter sign up form, so that will be exposure to site visitors.

Thinkhost seems to do pretty well.  I've gotten a few random 500 errors, but I get that on Joomla pages from time to time.  Some functions seem a little slow, but I don't know what normal is like.  Searches seem fine.  Imports, exports, updating data, all fine.  I haven't got that far into civiCRM use.  I put my experiences up on the host review page.