Magento / GoDaddy fun

Author: Alex
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So I’m starting to work with e-Commerce systems, and picked Magento because it has a very robust feature set (I still want to check out Zen Cart, for it also looks promising) . I’ve about got my current customer’s store up, just waiting on their host to setup the MySQL database to finish the install. Since I’ve got a bit of time to kill before that’s complete, I figured I’d do a small writeup on how much fun GoDaddy brought to me lol.

Okay, so all you really need to download is the Magento version that you want to use. Fortunately, GoDaddy finally caught up with the times and now provides PHP 5.2 with it’s hosting packages. Otherwise, you get to have fun with the “CGI last resort fix“.

So I also found out that because GoDaddy hosts both PHP 4 AND PHP 5, developers have to change the file extensions from .php to .php5 (what fun, right?).

So, hunting around the Internet brought me a quick solution for this.

In your Magento folder/setup, there should already be a .htaccess file. Open that file up and add the following line:

AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php

Now when you go to the Magento index page, you should see a ‘No Input File Specified’ error. This is another easy fix.

If you do not already have a php.ini file in your main folder, you need to create one. This will only work if you have selected the option of using Hosting Connection 2.0 . This will allow you to modify server settings for your site.

I had to name my file ‘php5.ini’ for it to recognize. I then added the following line:

cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1

GoDaddy decided to behave at this point and allowed me to see the installation wizard. Do not despair if it doesn’t work – there’s a few more things that can be done, just check out the official posting about this issue here.

So I only had one more error to pop up after this. It came in the form of a nice long text box. Apparently when I FTP’d the Magento software, one file didn’t transfer over. If this happens, just place the file where it belongs based off of the error message you may receive.

So once that’s all done, you should also have Magento hosted on a GoDaddy account.

As I explore the features of Magento, I’ll post my thoughts and ideas/tips up here.

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38 Responses to “Magento / GoDaddy fun”

  1. Danny Says:

    Cheers, great help!

    Reply

  2. Ramzan from www.OpenSoftReview.com Says:

    Hi,

    How’s the e-commerce site using magento?

    I heard that its have bugs even though have excellent web design and documentation part. ;)

    so what’s next?

    Reply

  3. admin Says:

    Actually, I’ve been working off and on with it this weekend, now that my back’s decided to play nice again. It’s very expansive, and I plan on writing up my experiences from the week about it – so look for that sometime today.

    Thanks for the comments :-)

    Reply

  4. Lynt Says:

    Man i have been banging my head for 2 days because of this thank you so much, i am way excited thank you

    Reply

  5. admin Says:

    Glad I could help – I’m still working on setting up a store using Magento, so stay tuned for a more detailed review than my more recent post.

    Reply

  6. Matt Says:

    I gotta say, this is the best resource for godaddy installs I have found. I am not that great of a web developer, and this was the only solution that got Magento going for me on Godaddy. Well Done! And many thanks.

    Reply

  7. Derrick Says:

    Great post. I was about to give up, but your fixes were able to get my demo site up and running.

    Reply

  8. admin Says:

    @ Derrick and Matt,

    I look forward to see what you can come up with on your sites ^^b Glad I could help.

    Reply

  9. Joshua Says:

    I just wanted to say thanks so much for the help and posting this. I love you!!! – Joshua

    Reply

  10. sibble Says:

    Great help, thanks!

    Reply

  11. qasim ali khawaja Says:

    Dear Admin;

    i got a situation here. I’ve installed Apache2Triad 1.5.4 with build in php 5.1.0
    With out modifying anything in .htaccess file i got this
    “Whoops, it looks like you have an invalid PHP version.

    Magento supports PHP 5.2.0 or newer. Find out how to install Magento using PHP-CGI as a work-around.”

    after that i downloaded php-5.2.6-Win32.zip and unzipped that in C:\apache2triad\php where the php5.1.0 files reside. but nothing usefull.

    Then i downloaded php5-cgi and drop that in cgi-bin
    but then C://locakhost/magento/index.php
    nothing happened unable to retive the admin and store front panel…
    Any suggestion ma client is waitng for the e-store..

    Reply

  12. admin Says:

    @Qasim
    Hmm. At first blush, it doesn’t seem like there’s a real quick way to upgrade through Apache2Triad. The version you have is the latest and greatest, but that’s from 2006 – making it ancient in Internet terms. Might I recommend using XAMPP (http://www.apachefriends.org)? I’ve used that on Linux and Windows without any real complications, plus they keep up to date with regular upgrades. Not having even heard of Apache2Triad before your post, that’d be the way I recommend. Let me know how it goes :-)

    Reply

  13. George Says:

    I have godaddy hosting and am trying to get magento to work. One question is, if my domain points to a folder and not the hosting root, can this work, or do I need a domani to point to the web hosting root in order to use the cgi fix?

    If possible, can you just send me an .htaccess file that will get me going?

    Right now, Im getting a 500 error.

    I can give you access of you wanna look.

    Thanks for your time.

    Reply

  14. admin Says:

    @George

    Hmmmm. I haven’t tried to play with the CGI fix tbh. At best I can say that I don’t think where your domain is pointing to should effect your Magento install (or any of your other php files for that matter). From the little I’ve read on the fix, it’s basically forcing your site to use PHP 5 as a CGI binary instead of using what your host is providing.

    I did some digging and came up with a nice link from the Magento forums that has several solutions to 500 internal server errors as a result of using the CGI fix. Check it out:

    http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/1330/

    Reply

  15. Marikins Says:

    George,
    I have Magento working on cheapo GoDaddy. I did nothing fancy, but followed a few steps from the installation instructions on the forum:

    1. Install Magento eCommerce application by downloading the latest Full Release Magento package (magento-1.1.3.zip), uploading the zip, and unarchiving it using the GoDaddy:FileManager:Unarchive function. Should unpack into a magento/ directory.

    2. Ensure that the directories app/etc , var , and media are writable by the web server. To do so, navigate to the directory with your FTP client and change to 777.

    Note:
    A common error, which usually comes up if you’re hosted by GoDaddy, is the no input file specified error.
    There are a couple of things you can do to fix this, but we’ll start with the one that usually works. In your magento/ directory, there should be a file called php.ini. Rename this to php5.ini. If that doesn’t work, add the following to the end of your newly renamed php5.ini file:
    cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1
    And if you’re still getting the error, add the following to the top of your .htaccess file:
    Options -MultiViews

    There are also some special instructions on the forum for people who do not want to install to a magento/ directory but to the root. I cannot find it now but a setting for a path needs to be changed.

    My big problem is speed. I am on the cheapo account, but it is painfully slow. Any optimizations help would be appreciated.

    Best,
    Mary

    Reply

  16. admin Says:

    @Marikins

    I’ve noticed a speed issue as well, but thought it may have something to do with Magento itself. I’ll have to try testing it out on my site’s hosting provider (HostMonster) and see if there’s any difference. Haven’t had much time to get back into Magento development – been busy with developing a symfony application.

    I’ll post what I find when I can do some tests ^^;

    Reply

  17. Shirey Says:

    I have been trying to get Magento to work on GoDaddy but with no luck even after you little article. Any suggestions?

    Reply

  18. admin Says:

    @Shirey

    To be of help, I’ll need some more info – what’s the error you are getting, or where is the Magento install getting stuck?

    Reply

  19. Jasen Says:

    The problem I am having is getting the mysql host to work with magento. I copy and paste it directly into the field where it asks for it on the magento setup, but it says it is not vaild. What else am I to do?

    Thanks

    Reply

  20. Lisa Says:

    hello, I am a complete newbie, am teaching myself everything and trying to get my site up myself. After searching,I realize that I am the over-achiever of the year. I’m very intimidated, but not out for the count just yet.

    I am currently hosting on GoDaddy Windows. Most forums state Linux. Did I just choose the wrong platform or is there still a chance that Magento will work for me? Also, I downloaded the software and will attempt to FTP the file to GoDaddy this weekend. Can I just follw your steps or is the process (if even possible) different for me because I am on Windows? Any help is greatly appreciated.

    FYI… if you visit my site, you will see an flash into. I am building my site in dreamweaver and will launch it later this month. I am hoping to have Magneto up on GoDaddy so my store can launch in January.

    Reply

  21. Alex Says:

    @Jasen Make sure that you have the full mysql database name, and the correct address for where your mysql database is stored. If that didn’t solve the problem, please feel free to post again. I’m back to keeping regular watch/posting of the blog, so I’ll be glad to help ^^v

    @Lisa You will need to contact GoDaddy customer support to have them switch your setup over to Linux. This should take no more that 24 hours (I know with the site I’ve worked on they were able to complete the transfer in about half that time).

    I checked out your site. Nice flash intro. I would suggest you give your visitors the option of skipping the intro once your site is fully online.

    If you are needing a quick jump start with developing with Magento, I strongly recommend reading through the material provided by the Magento site, and maybe even checking out php|architech’s book on developing with Magento linkie. I haven’t looked through the book, but it’s the only other published reference that I know about.

    Good luck with your site ^^b

    Reply

    Lisa Reply:

    Thanks Alex, so here is an update. I have just launched my site last month (yes a far cry from the original launch date, but I did say I was the over achiever of the year). I have since moved on from GoDaddy to another hosting provder (crucial web hosting) who is more expensive than GoDaddy and probably than I really want to pay, but with that said, I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MUCH FASTER MY SITE LOADS!!!. GoDaddy served its purpose in the planning and building stage, but on a live store, the speed can be detrimental to conversions. I still like GoDaddy, their support is excellent IMHO, and I still have other sites hosted with them, but for Magento, this gal definately thinks any who is serious about e-commerce may want to leave GoDaddy alone (or purchase the most expensive plan they have). And that’s all I have to say on that! Thanks for this topic.

    Reply

    Alex Reply:

    Glad to hear things are working out. I’ve been using hostmonster.com for about two years now. At $5ish a month, I can’t complain. I’ll be trying to deploy Magento on it in the near future. Please be on the lookout for my review on the Magento Beginner’s Guide from Packt Publishing.

    Reply

  22. Brian Says:

    Great advise on Magento setup in GoDaddy. However, why so fragmented step-by-step info?
    “navigate to the directory with your FTP client and change to 777″ WHAT has to be changed to 777? The file name? Which file? Or a new folder with the name 777?

    Reply

  23. Alex Says:

    With your FTP client, you need to change the file attributes from what they are to ’777′. This can be done through Filezilla (my FTP of choice) by right clicking on the file and selecting ‘File Attributes’. By changing the file to ’777′ you give full read/write access to the file so Magento can access it.

    Reply

  24. Eddie Says:

    You are the best
    I hope you will hawe “Godaddy_Problems” button on your home pagw

    Reply

    Alex Reply:

    Thanks for the kind words Eddie. I’m hoping to have more posts up soon about Magento.

    Reply

  25. andy rooney Says:

    Anyone have a GoDaddy account? I need to migrate my shared servers to a dedicated server and not sure how all of that works.

    Reply

  26. Stephan Barrett Says:

    We’ve had problems with an install and email. Seems like the Magento install is fine, though the system won’t send out email. Any ideas on what might be causing this on a Godaddy install?

    Thanks!

    Stephan

    Reply

    Alex Reply:

    @Stephen
    Double check your smtp connection within Magento. Not sure what else could be causing the issues.

    Reply

    Chris Reply:

    Stephan,

    Did you figure out what was causing the Email issue? I am experiencing the exact same issue when trying to send notifications through Magento. When I use SMTP to send emails, I receive a “554 The message was rejected because it contains prohibited virus or spam content” error, and when I send an email using PHP, the emails are sometimes sent, and other times not. Any help on this issue would be extremely appreciated as this issue will force me to change hosts unless I can figure it out. Messages are sent without issue on our development server, just not on GoDaddy. I have been over the script many times and cannot seem to determine the issue.

    Thanks for you help!!

    Reply

  27. lifeBLUE Blog | Company Insights on Search Marketing and Web Design Says:

    [...] are tons of people, just like me and you, who have had problems installing Magento on any server, let alone a Go Daddy one. Among the [...]

  28. jm-l4l Says:

    Can anyone help with code below i have seached for hours in this forum, for answers. But I couldn’t find any, the code below appear on example.com/magento/downloader/#pear_iframe. It asks me “to continue installation or re-download all magento core packages”

    my system is:
    Linux
    php 5.x
    hosted on godaddy

    Warning: include_once(Mage/Core/functions.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/content/l/4/l/l4lcali/html/magento/app/Mage.php on line 49

    Warning: include_once() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘Mage/Core/functions.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’/home/content/l/4/l/l4lcali/html/magento/app/code/local:/home/content/l/4/l/l4lcali/html/magento/app/code/community:/home/content/l/4/l/l4lcali/html/magento/app/code/core:/home/content/l/4/l/l4lcali/html/magento/lib:.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php’) in /home/content/l/4/l/l4lcali/html/magento/app/Mage.php on line 49

    Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/l/4/l/l4lcali/html/magento/app/Mage.php:49) in /home/content/l/4/l/l4lcali/html/magento/downloader/Maged/Controller.php on line 339

    Reply

  29. Danpep Says:

    Has anyone tried this with the latest magento 1.3.2.4 on a GoDaddy shared host? I am still getting the No Input File Specified error despite these instructions.
    tried the php.ini, tried renaming it to php5.ini, tried the .htaccess uncomment… all combinations above.

    Reply

  30. Ankit Jadav Says:

    Heyy! thanks for your help.

    AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php
    the above line in htaccess and other godaddy specified tweaks helped me.

    Reply

  31. Brandon Bugger Says:

    Great help. Installing magento onto any system can be a trick. I must say that I would totally go with magento over zen cart. Magento continually grows and is such a great and easy system to run. I would highly recommend magento.

    Reply

  32. Hanan Ali Says:

    Thanks alot :) GOD BLESS YOU

    Reply

  33. Irina Says:

    Hi Alex,
    i´m another desesperate magento “installer”…
    after i did suggested changes for few times finally i got installation wizar page, but cant go thrue.. get same error when i´m trying to continue… the page i get is /magento/index.php/install/wizard/beginPost/… the error is “input file…” any idea? because i´m totally lost…

    thanks beforehand for reply!

    Reply

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