Installing drupal

[#1]

I'm trying to install Drupal, and have some pretty basic questions - hoping someone will be kind enough to assist.
I've unpacked the thing into cgi-bin. The next stage is to open the start page and set the configuration options.
issue 1: the start page is index.php - I thought that simply typing http://ccgi.myname.plus.com/ would pull up index.php if index.html isn't present. But that isn't the case - it seems to need the full address http://ccgi.myname.plus.com/index.php. Is that correct?
issue 2: with a perl script the permissions should be 755, but I thought that php scripts did not need 'execute' permission. Drupal has quite a number of php files, and it looks as if I must manually set the permissions, because they won't run otherwise. The Drupal instructions do not mention this vital step, so either the Drupal instructions are very poor, or I'm not doing something right. Which is it?
issue 3: Drupal has an .htaccess file, which should be read and should set various configuration options for php. This does not seem to be happening, and Drupal will go no further. How do I get .htaccess to set php options?
Many thanks for any help you can offer.

[#2]

Quote from: drex

I've unpacked the thing into cgi-bin. The next stage is to open the start page and set the configuration options.

I suspect this is your problem. php scripts should be placed *outside* of the cgi-bin folder.

[#3]

Thank you - that's issue 1 out of the way
The permissions still need to be 755, but that's OK
issue 3 is the killer - I get:
"register_globals is enabled. Drupal requires this configuration directive to be disabled. Your site may not be secure when register_globals is enabled."
Drupal has an .htaccess file that wants to set this:
"  php_value register_globals                0"
- but I think the .htaccess file is not being obeyed. I'm not clear how this should work... are you able to help further?
Many thanks

(PS - I've assumed Apache is used - is that right? what version?)

[#4]

Yes PN use Apache . I think it's 1.3.X but they have masked the version string.
I don't think you can turn off register_globals in a .htaccess file so unless you are able to run Dupal with it enabled then I'm afraid it will not work on PN.

[#5]

Just for anyone thinking of upgrading to drupal 7 when it is released - it won't work on Plusnet's ccgi servers:

Quote

PHP 5.2 or higher will be a requirement for Drupal 7.

[#6]

Thank you very much for the help - saved me hours and hours of what would have been useless effort. I'll abandon the attempt, and will look elsewhere.
As a matter of interest is there another content management system that is known to work on PN?

[#7]

All of these work.
http://www.etomite.org/
http://www.joomla.org/
http://phpnuke.org/
http://wordpress.org/
I can't offer any help about the suitability of them though as aside from install them, I've not really done much else (with the exception of Wordpress).

[#8]

I have drupal running on the ccgi platoform (only an empty site so far). It is possible to turn register_globals off in a php.ini file.

[#9]

I have also got Drupal running using the php.ini method to disable register_globals. The only part of Drupal I haven't been able to get working is clean URL but other that it runs perfectly.

[#10]

So, two people got drupal to work on the ccgi plafform.  Could you maybe summarize what you did, I am pretty much stuck.  I am willing to try out several things and summarise back to this discussion. 
What I did so far was
1. unzip drupal 6.13 (current version right now) to a directory outside cgi-bin.
2. I also ran ' fixphpperms.sh -r' to make all php scripts executable. 
3. Finally, I modified site/default/settings.php to point to the right mysql server, as follows  (stuff in capitals masks my details)
    cd sites/default;  chmod u+w settings.php
3b. change in that file:
    $db_url = 'mysql://USERNAME:PASSWORD@humbug.plus.net/USERNAME_pn'; 
4. and did the same with the base_url variable, which I changed to
  $base_url = 'http://ccgi.USERNAME.plus.com/drupal1';
Drupal is more or less working, I can add stories etc but the stylesheets and images aren't working, even though the paths are correct in the source.  The trouble is that the ccgi platform doesn't seem to want to serve any non php files.  Any insights or, most of all, tips on how to get drupal 6 installed?
Thanks, Dirk

[#11]

Hi guys,
I'd also appreciate any comments about drupal implementation on plusnet ccgi space.
Having looked around & sought comment, drupal appears to be my preferred option for a couple of website rebuilds - some trusted contacts really like the power & usability.
But obviously it has to work on the existing hosting...
...so please do let us know what did you do that doesn't or does work. Does anyone have it fully running?
Thanks

[#12]

Here is a site running drupal
http://ccgi.collinet.plus.com/grandpops/
I'm now desperately trying to remember the steps I took to get it to run. It included fixphpperms, php.ini, and the database settings.
I am more than happy to post the content of my settings.php (minus some details obviously) if it will help.

[#13]

I personally have 5 sites running joomla it's free and there are literally hundreds of free and fantastic plugins. I'll admit that none of my sites are on PN as i lost faith in that side of things when my mail was deleted and my email was then comprimised with hackers getting access to all the addresses I'd ever sent mail too.
Instead i host on strato. Php settings are simply done, on strato at least, using an .htaccess file like the following:
AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php .php5 
This tells the server to process any php files using the above extensions using php5.
I recommend joomla and strato to anyone.
podman

[#14]

Not much help for someone wanting drupal on ccgi though

[#15]

drex had asked for other suggestions.