You can download the latest release of Obliquid from dev.obliquid.com or directly from sourceforge. It's recommended that you download the tar.gz package of the latest release.

If you've downloaded Obliquid directly on the system where it has to be installed you can move it to a location visible through the webserver.

For example:

mv obliquid-rel#.tar.gz /var/www
tar xfvz obliquid-rel#.tar.gz

It will create a directory named obliquid-rel#, where rel# will be the release number, such as 0.5.0, for example. You are now free to rename this directory with the name you prefer.

If you have only ftp access, you can unpack the archive on your system and then upload it to the final destination.

Point your browser to the just unpacked or uploaded Obliquid directory, for example to http://localhost/obliquid-rel# - you should see the welcome screen. Click on the I agree button if you agree to GNU LGPL licencing terms. Obliquid is free software, a software that gives you many freedoms, but remember that it's not public domain software. For example you can't remove the copyright notice, take away the credits, give to others without giving them the same rights given to you.

In this step your environment will be checked. It will be checked that at least PHP 4.1.0 is installed and that the memory limit is big enough. Further, file permissions and magic_quotes settings are checked too.

Turning off PHP magic_quotes.

If you have root access to the webserver, locate your php.ini and make sure that magic_quotes_gpc, magic_quotes_runtime, magic_quotes_sybase are all set to Off.

; Magic quotes for incoming GET/POST/Cookie data.
magic_quotes_gpc = Off

; Magic quotes for runtime-generated data, e.g. data from SQL, from exec(), etc.
magic_quotes_runtime = Off

; Use Sybase-style magic quotes (escape ' with '' instead of \').
magic_quotes_sybase = Off

If you don't have root access you can disable magic quotes using a .htaccess file. Write a text file with the content below, and drop it in the main Obliquid directory, naming it .htaccess.

php_value magic_quotes_gpc Off
php_value magic_quotes_runtime Off
php_value magic_quotes_sybase Off

Starting the setup script

If you have command line access, running sh common/scripts/startsetup in Obliquid directory will fix file permissions. Otherwise you've to make the listed files writeable to the webserver.

If an important requirement is not met, the go to step 2 button won't appear. You can try to fix the problems, and pushing the Retry button until the problems are solved.

Create new database checkbox: lets you decide to create tables in a new database or to use an existing one. Note that, by using two different table prefixes, two Obliquid installations may live in the same database.

Don't modify Database Type, since only MySQL is supported at the moment, and skip directly to Database Host. This setting lets you connect to a database on a different machine. Most of the time you won't need this feature, so you can leave "localhost" there.

Provide a reasonable "Database Name". Don't use spaces, use only alphabetic letters and numbers. If the Create a new database? option is not checked, you have to provide the name of an existing database.

As you reach step 3 you will either see a Connection OK message or some error message. For example if you mistyped the password you will have Could not connect to MySQL server message, in this case a Retry Step 2 button will appear.

If the connection was successfully established, then a Create DB and go to step 4 button will appear. This process takes some time, and should not be interrupted.

Multilanguage messages will get imported in this step. All you have to do is click on Import messages and go to step 6 button and wait. This step may take a long time, so be sure to click only once and to leave it running.

Now Obliquid is installed. The only thing left behind is to replace the setup script with the main index. This can be done by running sh common/scripts/endsetup or by simply replacing index.php with common/scripts/index.php.

After this step you can reload the page and start to use Obliquid.