Steps to Install CakePHP on Shared Hosting

In this article, we are going to discuss about How to install CakePHP on Shared Hosting. I have installed cakaPHP on my hosted web but I Couldn't get it to work quite right. After a few hours playing around with cakePHP, finally I got the correct installation.

My hosting service allows me to publish multiple websites/domains on the one account. They have FTP access to upload the websites and each website/domain appears as a separate directory off the root directory.

/
  /site1.com
     site1_files.htm
  /site2.com
     site2_files.htm
  /site3.com
     site3_files.htm 

My original installation was to simply unzip the CakePHP files to my new site. The result was something like:

/ 
  /site1.com 
     site1_files.htm 
  /site2.com 
     site2_files.htm 
  /site3.com 
     site3_files.htm 
  /site4.com 
     /cake 
        /config 
        /console 
        /libs 
        /tests 
        basics.php 
        bootstrap.php 
        dispatcher.php 
     /app 
        /config 
        /controllers 
        /models 
        /tests 
        /tmp 
        /vendors 
        /webroot 
            /css 
            /files 
            /img 
            /js 
            .htaccess 
            index.php 
        .htaccess 
        index.php 
     .htaccess 

     index.php

I have not listed all files and directories here. My webhost doesn't allow the DocumentRoot to be changed in the .htaccess file nor via the CPanel. I moved the 'app', 'cake' and 'vendors' directories and contents into the root directory. I deleted the .htaccess and index.php files from the site4.com directory (i.e the first level). 

I moved the contents of the 'webroot' directory into the site4.com directory and then deleted the empty webroot directory. I also changed the name of my 'app' directory to 'site4app', this allows me to run multiple cake apps from the one server, one cake app for each domain.

This is the resulting structure:

/ 
  /cake 
     /config 
     /console 
     /libs 
     /tests 
     basics.php 
     bootstrap.php 
     dispatcher.php 
  /site4app 
     /config 
     /controllers 
     /models 
     /tests 
     /tmp 
     /vendors 
     .htaccess 
     index.php 
  /site1.com 
     site1_files.htm 
  /site2.com 
     site2_files.htm 
  /site3.com 
     site3_files.htm 
  /site4.com 
     /css 
     /files 
     /img 
     /js 
     .htaccess 
     index.php 
  /vendors 
     /css 

     /js 

I then had to edit the index.php file in the site4.com directory (the old app/webroot directory) to point to the 'cake' and 'app' (now called site4app) directories. The CPanel of my account listed the actual directory of my site4.com domain as /hsphere/local/home/my_account_name/site4.com. Therefore I had to change;

ROOT to look at /hsphere/local/home/my_account_name

APP_DIR to look at /hsphere/local/home/my_account_name/site4app

CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH to look at /hsphere/local/home/my_account_name/cake

ROOT = /hsphere/local/home/my_account_name, APP_DIR = site4app, and 

CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH = /hsphere/local/home/my_account_name. 

The web document root has already been set in the CPanel settings from my web host as /hsphere/local/home/my_account_name/site4.com and therefore doesn't need to be set anywhere in cakephp.

The section below is what the relevant section in my index.php file looks like.

/** 
 * The full path to the directory which holds "app", WITHOUT a trailing DS. 
 * 
 */ 
    if (!defined('ROOT')) { 
        define('ROOT', DS.'hsphere'.DS.'local'.DS.'home'.DS.'my_account_name'); 
    } 
/** 
 * The actual directory name for the "app". 
 * 
 */ 
    if (!defined('APP_DIR')) { 
        define('APP_DIR', 'site4app'); 
    } 
/** 
 * The absolute path to the "cake" directory, WITHOUT a trailing DS. 
 * 
 */ 
    if (!defined('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH')) { 
        define('CAKE_CORE_INCLUDE_PATH', DS.'hsphere'.DS.'local'.DS.'home'.DS.'my_account_name'); 
    } 


/** 

I used the standarf .htaccess file in the site4.com directory (the old webroot) so it would load the correct page when someone went to www.site4.com. Anyway, mine looks like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>      
  RewriteEngine On 
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?url=$1 [QSA,L] 

</IfModule> 

I went to www.site4.com and it was all working. Nice! There was only one problem, I was getting the session ID appended to the URL. The advice of setting the "php_flag session.trans_id off" only caused a web server error.

To fix the problem I changed a setting in the core.php file in the site4app/config (old app/config) directory. Change the session.save value from 'php' to 'cake'. It's about line 104 in my file.

Configure::write('Session.save', 'cake'); 

Now when I loaded the page at www.site4.com it displayed some errors. This turned out to be due to a missing directory. I went to site4app/tmp (old app/tmp) directory and created a directory called 'sessions'. Loaded the page again. Now No errors.

I hope this method also works for you. Good luck. Have a great day.