Step 3. Configure PHP

Required PHP extensions

You need at least following extensions:

If you are going to use LDAP for authentication, you need also 'ldap' extension.

If you will use MySQL as your database server, you need 'mysql' extension in addition.

If you will use Microsoft SQL Server as your database server, you need 'sqlsrv' extension (v1.1 or later).

If you will use Oracle as your database server, you also need 'dbx' and 'oci8' extensions.

If you will use PostgreSQL as your database server, you need 'pgsql' extension.

Sensitive PHP options

  1. The safe_mode option must be set to Off value.
  2. Both magic_quotes_gpc and magic_quotes_runtime options must be set to Off value.
  3. The default_charset option should be either commented, or set to "UTF-8".
  4. It's strongly recommended to set the date.timezone option to your local timezone (e.g. "America/Chicago"). Full list of supported timezones can be found here.

See also description of self diagnosis page, which can help to check whether you have all required extensions installed and all sensitive options set to valid values.

Additional information for Microsoft SQL Server users

If you use Microsoft SQL Server as a database server, you also have to install to your web server the following items:

  1. SQL Server Driver for PHP, which version must be v1.1 at least. You can download it either from Microsoft, or from here (703.9 KB).
  2. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client. You can download it either from Microsoft, or from here (4.4 MB).

Last update: 2010-02-12