Installation and setup

WaypointHR has been designed to be as easy to use as possible, including a straightforward installation process. WaypointHR can be installed on both Windows and Linux web servers and accessed with your regular web browser.

If you have already installed WaypointHR, please see Upgrading an existing installation.

Prerequisites

To get started, you will need the following.

WaypointHR can be installed in Windows or Linux environments. If you don't want to install Apache, MySQL and PHP separately, XAMPP is a free, easy to install combined distribution. This provides everything you need to get started installing WaypointHR, and is particularly suited to testing out WaypointHR. You don't even need a separate server, as it can be intalled on your desktop machine. (Of course, we recommend a separate server when you're ready to go live!)

Download the files

First, download the appropriate file for your web server (either Windows or Linux) from the WaypointHR download page. The files are compressed, so uncompress them and copy the files to the appropriate directory on your web server (normally a subdirectory of the htdocs folder). (You can use FTP to upload the files if you are installing to a remote server.)

Open your web browser to the WaypointHR folder on your web server. You should see a "Welcome to WaypointHR" message. Click the "Continue with Installation" button, review the release notes, then click the next "Continue with Installation" button.

Installing the database

The next step is to setup and configure the database. The installation process can create the database, the tables and a user account for you, if you have a user account with the required permission.

For most installations, the database server runs on the same machine as the web server. In these situations, you can leave the server name as localhost. If your database server is a separate machine, change the server name. (If your database server is configured to run on a port other than the default, add a colon and a port number after the server name - e.g. localhost:3307).

The schema is the name of the WaypointHR database. If this does not already exist, it will be created for you (if possible). If the schema already exists, the tables will be created automatically. (If the tables themselves already exist, they will be verified to ensure they have the correct columns etc., and extended if required. Please see the upgrade information, and ensure you have a backup of your data!)

WaypointHR can be configured to run on shared web-hosting services. Some shared web hosts require you to use a database that has been created with your website's control panel. If so, create the database first, then enter the information into the WaypointHR installation page. Please consider the security implications of using shared or remote web-hosting.

If you wish to prefix your WaypointHR tables, please enter a table prefix. (This is particularly useful if you need different applications to use the same database.)

The username and password are what WaypointHR will use to access the database. We recommend this is a separate user to your MySQL administrator (root) account. If possible, it will be created for you if it does not already exist.

Finally, if you are creating a new database (and haven't already created one by hand), please provide a username and password that has the necessary permission. This information is not stored, as it is only used for installation.

Click the "Create database" button to continue. The database will be created, and your configuration data saved (into a conf/installation_settings.php file).

Getting Started

If everything went okay, you can follow the link to log in. In future, you will be able to go straight to the log in page by simply browsing to the WaypointHR folder on your web server.

A default admin user is created, so for your first login, please use admin (with a password of admin). Please change the password immediately!

To start using WaypointHR, please see: Using WaypointHR - First Steps

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