SPIP is a very widely used content management system (especially in France). It is praised for its flexibility and it's very, very simple installation process. See for yourself:

It's wise to have a database dedicated to SPIP. Let's go crazy, and call it “spip”.

If you don't (yet) know how to go about this, please read this tutorial.

You have a choice here. For “neatness'” sake, such applications are generally placed in a folder within the www sub-domain (www.example.com/spip) or in a specific sub-domain of its own (spip.example.com).

Easy! Just make sure the you create a specific folder for the store (as in www.example.com/spip)

Two things to do:

• Configure your server for this sub-domain, as explained in this tutorial.
• Configure your sub-domain to point to the server you have just configured, as explained in this tutorial.

This is the option we will be using in the rest of the tutorial.

Amazingly, you just need to fetch a single page from the SPIP website, called “spip_loader.php”, save it in your hard drive (File > Save as…) and upload it into the spip directory you had created on your server.

To begin with, we need to download it. You can get it and save it from here.

Now that you've save the file onto your favorite hard drive, launch your favorite FTP client (we recommend FileZilla) and log in as admin onto your server. Then, open the folder you had initially created.

Following which, you will need to change the rights of the spip folder. Using your FTP client all you need to do is right-click the folder concerned and choose the right term in the menu (could be Rights, CHMOD, Properties…). Supposing you were using FileZilla, this is how the client would operate:

Right-click the concerned file and select “File Attributes…”. The window that has just opened gives you two different methods to change the file rights: boxes to tick and numeric values.

The point of the tutorial not being to teach the numeric values of rights in UNIX, let's just say you can simply replace the numeric value of the folder by 777.

Using your web browser, open the spip_loader.php page, which, in our example, would therefore be located at spip.example.com/spip_loader.php.

If SPIP was properly uploaded and the folder rights properly attributed as explained above, you should now be greeted by a French welcome page, but with an option allowing you to choose your preferred language.

You can then click the Next button to start the installation.

You will then reach a page asking you to confirm your language selection. Next!

You will be given several fields to fill in:

Database address: localhost

Connection login: this is the user name you created along with a database name, as pointed out at the beginning of the tutorial

Connection password: …and this is the password associated to the user name you created.

A confirmation message will be displayed. Next.

Choose the spip database that you had previously created from the list displayed.

A confirmation message will be displayed. Next.

Choose a 'signature', give your email, and create an account for you to login to SPIP as the administrator.

You'll notice they suggest a default password, which is the same password used to access your database password. It's up to you to change it.

Congratulations, you're finished! You're advised to keep your access codes, unless you fancy installing SPIP all over again :)

Should you want more information on how to configure SPIP, the official (English) website.