Jun
7
2008
Magento / GoDaddy fun
Author: AlexSo 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.

The Magento / GoDaddy fun by BlueFire Data Solutions, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
July 6th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Cheers, great help!
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July 12th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
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?
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July 13th, 2008 at 8:17 am
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
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July 20th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Man i have been banging my head for 2 days because of this thank you so much, i am way excited thank you
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July 22nd, 2008 at 5:49 pm
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.
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August 22nd, 2008 at 10:38 pm
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.
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August 24th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Great post. I was about to give up, but your fixes were able to get my demo site up and running.
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August 24th, 2008 at 8:12 am
@ Derrick and Matt,
I look forward to see what you can come up with on your sites ^^b Glad I could help.
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September 1st, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I just wanted to say thanks so much for the help and posting this. I love you!!! – Joshua
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September 15th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Great help, thanks!
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September 24th, 2008 at 2:23 am
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..
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September 24th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
@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
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October 1st, 2008 at 7:46 am
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.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
@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/
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October 9th, 2008 at 7:11 am
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
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October 9th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
@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 ^^;
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November 1st, 2008 at 12:55 am
I have been trying to get Magento to work on GoDaddy but with no luck even after you little article. Any suggestions?
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November 3rd, 2008 at 10:03 am
@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?
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November 19th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
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
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December 5th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
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.
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December 5th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
@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
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Lisa Reply:
May 6th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
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.
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Alex Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
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.
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January 7th, 2009 at 11:50 am
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?
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January 8th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
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.
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February 11th, 2009 at 7:29 am
You are the best
I hope you will hawe “Godaddy_Problems” button on your home pagw
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Alex Reply:
May 26th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Thanks for the kind words Eddie. I’m hoping to have more posts up soon about Magento.
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June 2nd, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Anyone have a GoDaddy account? I need to migrate my shared servers to a dedicated server and not sure how all of that works.
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August 4th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
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
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Alex Reply:
September 1st, 2009 at 2:31 pm
@Stephen
Double check your smtp connection within Magento. Not sure what else could be causing the issues.
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Chris Reply:
October 10th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
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!!
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September 8th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
[...] 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 [...]
December 7th, 2009 at 3:26 am
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
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December 31st, 2009 at 2:50 pm
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.
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October 6th, 2010 at 2:25 am
Heyy! thanks for your help.
AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php
the above line in htaccess and other godaddy specified tweaks helped me.
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June 14th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
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.
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October 16th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Thanks alot
GOD BLESS YOU
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December 15th, 2011 at 6:47 pm
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!
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