Installation: How to Install MODx Revolution—Literally

Please forgive my basic question relating to initial installation. I have don several install of MODx, each with it's own set of odd permission related issues, and therefore I am searching for specific, literal instructions to help expedite the install process.

Question 1: What does "extract the files to your server" mean?
I download MODx to my mac, and my mac automatically extracts the package. In the past then, I have used my web host's file manager to upload all of the folders and files, which seems to result in a huge time sync going back in with the web host file manager and modifying all kinds of permissions. Lots of anxiety to say the least.

Question 2: Should I upload the original MODx zip that automatically gets put into my Mac's trash after download, and upload that zip using my web host's file manager and THEN upack/unzip on the web server?

Question 3: If the answer to Question 1 is YES, then I'm guessing—as on my mac—than when the zip file is unpacked, it puts all of the files and folder in one folder called: modx-2.2.5-pl
Do I leave everything in that folder? Or do I need to drag everything out into the main directory. It seems odd to have multiple periods in a directory name.

Any help / suggestions greatly appreciated.

The MODX zip file should be uploaded to your server uncompressed. You can use FTP for the zip file, but don't use FTP to upload any uncompressed MODX files to the server. Everything from here on out should be done on the server itself.

On your server, either in the file manager or through the server's extraction script, unpack the zip file. It should create it's own folder which contains the extracted files. This is a temporary folder which is not part of your actual installation.

Copy or move these files from that folder, into whatever directory (root or root/subdirectory) you wish to install MODX into. You can delete both the zip file and the extracted folder and files after installation.

Excellent. Thanks for the quick response and clarification. In terms of your response in paragraph 3, moving those files to a root/subdirectory... do you recommend just putting them all loose in the root of the site, or do you recommend creating a specific folder for modx? Up til now, I have always managed to just put them all loose in the root and that seems to work fine, though it does make things a bit messy as I add other folders and items that are unrelated to Modx.

Depending on the access you have on the server, it can be a great help to upload the zip file (or even use wget to get it on the server in the first place!) and to unzip in the server.

Using FTP can have unreliable results, where some files are corrupted or not uploaded at all, which can be a pain to diagnose. That's where uploading the zip and unzipping in the server helps, that's much less error prone.


You can put the files wherever you want and what makes sense for your site. If the MODX site is the main thing on that server, I just throw it in the root. If there's already another site running it can be in a dev subdir/subdomain, but for a functional MODX install it doesn't matter much where you put it.

Thanks Mark: Very much appreciate the feedback. Feeling much more optimistic about my next install.

Using FTP can have unreliable results

Can't say I've ever experienced that, and I upload magento, modx, wordpress on a daily basis, I actually think it's down to the persons internet connection / host

I'm on a mac and definitely, unzipping the archive on my hard drive and THEN uploading either via FTP application like Fetch OR even using the file manager of my hosting plan results in folders and files than eventually need their permissions modified in order for MODx to function. I found that using the host file manage worked far better than using Fetch or Dreamweaver.

Certainly, I am optimistic that uploading the zip via the file manager of my host server and THEN unpacking on the server seems much more promising. Will report back with results.

I'm on a Mac at home and work and as I've said have no problems with uploading via FTP ( im using file zilla ) , yeh it takes 10 mins to upload but I'm sticking to what works for me

results in folders and files than eventually need their permissions modified

Speak to your host with regards to the permissions as that will be a server setting, also wheny you say needing Modx to function do you mean on the install or after it as the install askes you to input folder permissions ?

By saying "needing to function" I mean for MODx to give the OK when it runs that diagnostic process.

Usually I've installed and/or during the install, MODx install give an alert that certain permissions need to be changed on a given folder. Usually I end up having to grant ALL permissions I think in order to get MODx install to move on to the next step.

I'm just hoping that by unzipping the application file ON the server as opposed to prior to upload, that I won't have that issue. Maybe not. But—certainly easier to upload one zip archive that a bunch of files and folder. With Fetch, it's easy to do a bunch at once. But, with the host server file manager, it's one file at a time.

Paul, I'm glad you've not had issues with ftp uploads yourself! Those are the worst, especially when it reports everything went fine I also use FileZilla (on both PC and Mac) and haven't had it a lot myself but definitely seen enough broken sites cause of it. Lately I've been using wget and even git to install new installs, as I just want to power on and get it up Probably spoilt by the Cloud's click-done buttons

mmcgee, you can also ask your host to install suphp or phpsuexec on the server. That can help sort out file ownership issues (which can get messy.. eg not being able of touching files that were uploaded through php in your ftp client).