Installing Your Arcade

We will be installing your arcade through a web browser, so in your web browser go to http://www.yourdomain.com/install/install.php with ‘yourdomain.com’ replaced with your arcade domain name. You should see a page that displays the following, Figure 3-13.

Figure 3-13 Installing your Arcade, Step 1.

In this step you will need to enter your MySQL Database information that we had just finished setting up. In the ‘Database Hostname’ text box you will enter ‘localhost’. Then enter your database name, database user, database user password, and click the ‘Next Step’ button to view your connection results shown in Figure 3-14.

Figure 3-14 Database Connection Results.

If you have entered your information correctly you should see the page display ‘SCRIPT WAS ABLE TO CONNECT TO THE DATABASE’ as shown in the previous figure. If you have not entered the correct information the page will inform you that a connection was not made and you will be asked to go back and enter the correct information again.

After you have confirmed the correct information from the Database Connection Results click on the ‘START INSTALL’ button.

The next page will display step 2 of installing your arcade, shown below in Figure 3-15.

Figure 3-15 Installing your Arcade, Step 2.

In step 2 you are prompted to enter your ‘Arcade Site Title’, this is the title that you want to call your arcade. You will also have a text box titled ‘Arcade BASE URL’, which is the domain name of your arcade. Next you will enter your arcade admin username and password which you will use to login to the control panel or back-end of your arcade.

Okay, I would just like to take a second to talk to you about two terms ‘front-end’ and ‘back-end’. Your arcade is going to have two parts, the front-end and the back-end.

• Front-End – The front-end of your site is the place where visitors come to play games, rate games, comment on games, and all the other functionalities of playing on a web arcade. To access the front-end of your arcade we would simply go to ‘yourdomain.com’ website.
• The back-end of your arcade is where you will go to add games, edit games, delete games, add users, and many other administrative arcade configurations. In order to use the back-end you need to login using the admin username and password that we setup in Figure 3-15. In order to access the back-end of your arcade we will soon navigate to ‘yourdomain.com/admin’ and login.

So to re-cap, when referring to the front-end of your web arcade we will be referring to the place where visitors come to play games, ‘yourdomain.com’ website. When referring to the back-end of your arcade we will be referring to the administrative part of your arcade. I just wanted to clarify this so that when referring to these terms in the future you acknowledge what is being stated. Okay, back to the installation.

All the information entered in step 2 can later be change in the back-end of your arcade, so don’t be worried about entering in a title or a username that you may want to modify later.

Tip: (As it says on the screen make sure to enter the trailing / or you may have linking complications.)

 When you have filled out the required information in step 2 you can click the ‘Next Step’ button and you will arrive at the final installation page shown in Figure 3-14. This page will display a security key, username, and password.

Figure 3-14 Arcade Installation Completed.

The security key is just another password that you will be prompted for when you try and login to the back-end of your arcade.

Good Job! You are now done installing your arcade. Make sure you have written down your security key, username, and password.  Another thing we are going to want to do is to delete the install directory. From the public_html or ‘www’ directory of our host computer, in the Filezilla application, you should see the install folder. You can delete the folder by right clicking on the file and selecting delete or you can click the icon and hit the delete button.

The final thing that we are going to do in this hour is login to our back-end admin control panel and set our arcade active. To make our arcade active we will login to our arcade control panel, click on the Site Configuration menu, and update the configuration.

To login to your arcade control panel you can click on the blue link as shown in the figure 3-14. In the future, anytime you want to login to your arcade control panel you can go to http://www.yourdomain.com/admin/ and you will be presented with a login screen as shown in Figure 3-15.

Figure 3-15 Back-end admin control panel login.

From the login screen enter in your admin username, password and security key. After you have input the correct information click the ‘Login’ button and you will see a screen in front of you that resembles Figure 3-16.

Figure 3-16 Your arcade admin control panel.

The figure above is you arcade admin control panel. This is the place where we will be adding our games, editing members, and other arcade configurations. From the control panel menu to the left of the screen click on the ‘SITE CONFIGURATION’ and you will be in front of the site configuration screen of your control panel, shown in Figure 3-17.

Figure 3-17 Back-end site configuration screen.

The site configuration screen will display many options available to change our arcade configurations. We will discuss the site configuration page more detailed in the next hour. For now, we are going to scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the ‘Update Configuration’ button as shown in the below in Figure 3-18.

Figure 3-18 bottom of the back-end arcade site configuration page.

After you have clicked updated the configuration your arcade will now be active. If you visit ‘www.yourdomain.com’ you will see your new arcade site. Your new arcade will be displayed with the default arcade template as shown in Figure 3-19.

Figure 3-19 Arcade site default template.

Congrats! Your arcade is now up and running; unfortunately, there are no games available to play. Don’t worry; we will soon get to adding games. Soon we will also be modifying the look and feel of your arcade. So, without further ado (‘I hate it when people say that’) lets move onto the next hour of configuring your arcade.