Install Magento on Rackspace Cloud Sites : Step by Step Guide

Install Magento on Rackspace Cloud Sites by following this easy Step by Step Guide. Install yourself and run your own Ecommerce Website on any Server for Free. As the regular users are understanding, with this article on how to Install Magento on Rackspace Cloud Sites, our Magento Guide will start and users will not need to pay up to $500 for just setup. This word Setup is very pathetic term for most CMS to fetch huge money. In the way we are describing, you will see the process to Install Magento on Rackspace Cloud Sites or any webhost is just few minutes work and basically you need not be a programmer to Install Magento.

Footnote before we proceed to install Install Magento

The claim of “Magento Optimized Server” is a scam and if you feel you have been ripped you can file a lawsuit against anyone for such falsified claims. The basic requirement to Install Magento on a web server is basically less advanced than WordPress. Technically WordPress with perfect matched plugins are far superior than any free or paid CMS – be it performance wise, SEO wise, Usability wise or wide and Cheaper support wise. There are some plugins for WordPress which can convert WordPress to a E-Commence website and some integrated themes are also available.
Whatever, as we basically want to Install Magento, you need to check the following things for a server depending on the load –

It is better to think of a Cloud Server or a Traditional VPS to Install Magento. We do not suggest a dedicated server for the huge cost (versus VPS or Cloud Server) if your data is not very sensitive in nature. For Optimal Performance (with existing or expected very high load) Install Magento on either Rackspace’s or Media Template’s high performance server with Load Balancers, CDN and Cloud DNS.

Basically LAMP configuration is needed if you want to Install Magento with all the features.

You can also read our another article on E-Commerce things before you proceed to install Magento.

Steps to Install Magento on Rackspace Cloud Sites

The needed fight to download Magento to Install Magento

As you by default can not use the Console for Rackspace Cloud Sites, you can ask the Rackspace Support to use wget command to dump it some where within your Rackspace account’s territory and untar it there. The reason is, if you upload the untar-ed version of Magento using SFTP client it will take a painfully huge time to get uploaded on the server. Still if you do not want to request Rackspace Support, Just click this link to go to the download page and Select tar.gz (it will be more compressed = smaller to download) version under Full Release sub header. Do not look here and there on the webpage there are many paid baits are waiting for you! Download it like a blind on your hard disk and untar it.

Adding the needed domain or subdomain to Install Magento

Login to your Rackspace Cloud Account and Click Cloud Sites Under Hosting :

If you have already added the needed domain to Install Magento that is well and good. Skip this next step then. Otherwise this step is needed to Install Magento (quite obviously) :

This is a multi-functional screen shot! If you need to add a new domain to Install Magento, simply type the domain name with extension (unhighlighted part in the screenshot), if you want to install Magento on a subdomain, type the intended name of subdomain you want to Install Magento. In the above example, the highlighted subdomain with dot is the intended subdomain name.  Click Add a new site, if you already own the domain where you will Install Magento, some prompt will show up and you need to click ‘I already own it’ like disclaimer. Quite obviously you will need to point the name-servers to dns1.stabletransit.com and dns2.stabletransit.com from the account where you have registered your domain name. If you are buying through Rackspace, its just a matter of few clicks. Select a Package, make sure you have enabled databases (use the unlimited option) and Linux / Apache as technology. You extra bill will be $0.00 except the domain name’s bill (if you are registering a new or transferring).

Within few minutes your domain will be ready to install Install Magento. To check whether it is ready, simply go to the domain address from on browser and you will get a ‘Your Website is Ready’ webpage. This is the default automated index.html page generated by the system.

Adding SQL database to Install Magento

Now click the name of the intended domain name where you will install Magento (under Website list) and click the features tab and then click the Add button :

Open any Text Editor (like Notepad) and copy the full name, including the name you are giving and the highlighted part in this screenshot :

So, in text editor / notepad, you are writing in this way :

Click the Continue button and in the same way give a user name and copy paste it as Username (and Password) on your text editor. Within few minutes the database will be created.

Now, if you click the Database name you have created (that is a hyperlink itself) this page will open :

Our Hostname is mysql50-51.wc1, not localhost – that is for traditional database server. For our Cloud Database server it will be like two or three part unique name. So copy paste this one too, on your notepad.

Final steps to Install Magneto

If you have already dumped the untar-ed version of  Magento somewhere on your Rackspace hosting space (after requesting the support) that is well and good, otherwise use any SFTP client (WinSCP for Windows users) to point towards the new web folder. For us, if we take the example of www.arpitasarkar.com domain name, navigate from your sFTP client to :

First delete that index.html thing that will be there. Now Copy (or Move in case Magento is already on your server somewhere) all the contents inside Magento folder and paste them to  /web/content/ – so that the LICENSE.txt is accessible from any browser when you type :  http://domainmane.com/LICENSE.txt on browser address bar.

If you are coping from hard disk, it will might few hours only to copy the files. After transfer is complete, go to /web/content/errors/ folder and rename the file local.xml.sample to local.xml

Now we are ready to install Magento. Simply open your browser and go to either your domain name (arpitasarkar.com in our example) or to equivalent url like this : http://arpitasarkar.com/index.php/install/

This is where you will insert the data from your Notepad to Install Magento. Because of Magento’s hugely distributed files, it is very slow to react. Anyway, the next steps are pretty easy to install Magento. I Agree step, then continue and finally this page opens :

Again, our host is not localhost. It is what we have copied during creation of darabase to install Magento. Note that this hostname in screenshot to install magento does not match with our above example. This is because I have used separate databases for example purpose. Tick mark the option saying ‘ Use Web Server (Apache) Rewrites’ and Click Continue to Install Magento.

Our work to Install Magento is complete.