If you purchased a commercial Joomla template it is very likely that in the package you got you have a special installation package, called Quickstart which let you have the carbon copy of the template demo site in just couple of clicks. It is a gread bonus, helpful especially for beginners. but once in a while you might have problems by installing this package, especially if you try to install it on your local machine.
Because Quickstart includes not only the core Joomla, but the demo content, probably additional extensions, and their settings it is more demanding for server environment, than the core Joomla package alone.
First of all, you must be sure to check if your environment fulfills the Technical Requirements for setting up Joomla.
The most likely culprit is that you don't have the requested, correct PHP settings. If during QuickStart installation you have a never-ending installation or it stuck/freezes on creating tables first of all you need to check the PHP environment.
In most cases your PHP environment is outdated or you don't meet the minimum settings for the key environment variables. First of all, check your PHP version and if needed, upgrade it to the recommended version - as I wrote this, 7.3.*. If the install still freezes, you need to check the most important environment settings, as available memory, upload max filesize and alike. One of mostly overlooked settings, but which causes the majority of these frozen installs is the PHP's max execurion time. While this is generally has a value around 60 - good for live sites - try this:
- increase the maximum execution time for
PHPto 400 or even 600 by adding to php.ini - or .user.ini, depending your server's settings this value:
max_execution_time = 600
You can make this change inside your .htaccess file too - the sintax is slightly different, but you can Google for it.. Make sure to restart your web server for the changes to take effect.
Go back to your System Information and check if your values have changed. If not, please contact your hosting company for assistance in editing these values.
If you are succeeded, and the install went out correctly, don't forget to set back the above value to the original setting! Usually is enough to comment out the added line.
Note! If you don't know how to change PHP settings - please contact your hosting support. They should help you. Sometimes information on how to change PHP values is included on your hosting website Help/FAQ section.
QuickStart Installer customization
If the above steps will not help - you can try a small customization in the quickstart package:
- Open in your text editor the following files:
installation\sql\mysql\joomla.sql
and
installation\sql\mysql\sample_data.sql - Find all instances of ENGINE=InnoDB and change/replace to ENGINE=MyIsam
- Now return in your installation procedure one step back and try again.
- If still freezes during install opt for using MySQL and not the default MySQLi if you still have problems with database.
Good to know, that despite the fact that InnoDB is faster and more recommended for Joomla, MyISAM is more supported in most local installs and is still compatible with Joomla!
