Installing Ideal Podcasts is no different than installing any other Joomla!™ extension on your site. You can read the complete instructions for installing Joomla!™ extensions on the official help page. Throughout this chapter, we assume that you are familiar with these instructions and we will try not to duplicate them.
Just like with most Joomla! extensions there are three ways to install or manually update Ideal Podcasts on your site:
Install from URL. This works only with the Professional release of our component. It is the easiest and fastest one, if your server supports it. Most servers do support this method.
Upload and install. That's the typical extension installation method for Joomla! extensions. It rarely fails. This is the recommended method.
You cannot and MUST NOT use the Discover method in Joomla to install any modern Joomla extension shipped as a package, consisting of many related extensions. This will make it impossible to find and install updates automatically and will also cause problems when updating Joomla itself.
Keep in mind that installing and updating Ideal Podcasts (and almost all Joomla! extensions) is actually the same thing. If you want to update Ideal Podcasts you MUST NOT uninstall it before installing the new version. When you uninstall Ideal Podcasts you will lose all your component settings and all stored episodes and categories. This is definitely something you do not want to happen! Instead, simply install the new version on top of the old one. Joomla! will figure out that you are doing an update and will treat it as such, automatically.
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If you find that after installing or updating Ideal Podcasts it is missing some features or doesn't work, please try installing the same version a second time, without uninstalling the component. The reason is that very few times the Joomla! extensions installer code gets confused and fails to copy some files or entire folders. By repeating the installation you force it to copy the missing files and folders, solving the problem. |
You can download the latest installation packages our site's download page for Ideal Podcasts, please make sure that you have logged in first.
All Ideal Podcasts installation packages contain the component and all of its associated extensions. Installing it will install all of these items automatically. It can also be used to upgrade Ideal Podcasts; just install it without uninstalling the previous release.
In any case, do not extract the ZIP files yet!
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Attention Mac OS X users! Safari, the default web server provided to you by Apple, is automatically extracting the ZIP file into a directory and removes the ZIP file. In order to install the extension through Joomla!'s extensions installer you must select that directory, right-click on it and select Compress to get a ZIP file of its contents. This behaviour was changed in Mac OS X Mountain Lion, but people upgrading from older versions of Mac OS X (Mac OS X Lion and earlier) will witness the old, automatic ZIP extraction, behaviour. |
Log in to your site's administrator section. Click on , link on the top menu. Please click on the Upload Package File tab. Drag and drop the installation ZIP file you had previously downloaded to start the upload and the installation. After a short while, Joomla!™ will tell you that the component has been installed.
If the installation did not work, please try again, and if the problem persists take a look at our installation troubleshooting instructions below.
Please note that extension installation is performed by Joomla itself, not code that we have written ourselves. If you have a problem installing a Joomla extension of ours the root cause is in Joomla! and the way some of its functions work. While we don't offer support for generic installation issues, this page is meant to serve as a collection of the troubleshooting steps we'd follow on any site when any extension doesn't install correctly.
You get an error about the package not being uploaded to the server
The installation packages of our extensions are rather big, approaching 2Mb for the Professional versions. Many servers have a maximum file upload size or a maximum POST request size which is too small – typically around 2MB – for our software to install. The best solution is to ask your host to set the following in the server's php.ini:
upload_max_filesize = 10M post_max_size = 10M
On most hosts, you can place these lines in a file called .user.ini (not the leading dot) or php.ini in your site's administrator directory.
If this is not possible, there's a good chance that the following lines in your .htaccess file may work on most servers:
php_value upload_max_filesize 10M php_value post_max_size 10M
If this still doesn't help please read on for further troubleshooting tips
"Install path does not exist"
Joomla! requires the PHP Gzip and ZIP extensions to be installed. If either is not installed or if it's blocked then Joomla! will be unable to install extensions. Unfortunately, a cascade of unhandled errors inside Joomla! itself will cause it to come up with the unhelpful and disorienting "Install path does not exist" error message.
Solution: ask your host to enabled the GZip and ZIP extensions in PHP. Furthermore, ask them to make sure that they are not blocking the functionality of these extensions e.g. by using disable_functions or disable_classes in their php.ini file.
Please note that we routinely see hosts disabling functions zip_open, gzuncompress, gzdeflate and gzdecode for ostensible "security reasons". First of all Joomla! WILL NOT work properly when any of these functions is unavailable. Moreover and despite what your host tells you, disabling this functions does not increase your site's security in any conceivable way. If your host denies to unblock these functions please take your site to a different host that understands how server security really works.
"Unable to write entry" or "Unable to create destination" error
This error message comes from Joomla! and it means that there is a file or directory permissions issue. Unfortunately, this message is very non-specific and provides no useful information for troubleshooting. This is something Joomla fixed for the most part but internal issues in the way the extensions installer works still prevent the correct path from being shown.
In the meantime, all you can do is ask your host to make sure that all folders and files on your site are writeable by the user under which your site runs. This is not something you or us can do. Please do ask your host.
If this doesn't help it might mean that you have reached the file system capacity of your server. Please note that your account on the server might have several limits:
The maximum total size of files and database data. This is the most common limit, e.g. your host telling you that you can use 10G of space in total. Please remember that this includes your database data. Moreover, keep in mind that "unlimited" is a marketing term, not reality. Usually, you get up to a certain size limit and you have to ask for more, explaining why.
Maximum number of files. This is usually NOT advertised, documented or visible anywhere. Many hosts will only allow you up to a maximum number of files, e.g. 100,000. If you try to exceed that count the file is not created/replaced, as if the permissions were not adequate to write to it. Please note that most times the host engineers will call it "inode count" because that's technically what they are limiting on your hosting user account. Each inode is a filesystem index entry and each file and folder on your site consumes one inode (that's not very accurate but it's a well enough description to understand what an inode is).
The physical disk size. All the aforementioned limits are great, but you cannot create files beyond the physical capacity of the disks on your server. Most modern hosts use virtualized, network-attached storage to provide ever-expanding capacity on demand. However, some cheaper hosts and dedicated servers still have regular disks attached with finite storage limits.
The block count. Please remember that computer permanent storage cannot be allocated with a single byte granularity. It is allocated in blocks, typically 4KB to 32KB each. Think of it as an apartment building where everyone gets the same size, four-bedroom apartment regardless of whether they are single or a family of seven with a dog and two cats. This means that small files, whose size is nominally under one block, will occupy at least one block. Your host counts the disk space usage by the number of blocks you occupy but hosting control panels report the aggregated nominal sizes of the files. It is possible for the hosting control panel to report free space when you have reached the block limit of your hosting account.
Also, remember that your hosting control panel does not report the limit information in real-time. You may have already exceeded your limits but your control panel not having been updated with this information.
If you are not sure about these limits please ask your host.
Upgrading from Core to Professional
In some cases, we have seen that Joomla failed to copy all of the necessary files when upgrading from a Core to a Professional release or when installing a major update that spans major versions (e.g. 1.x to 2.y). If you believe this has happened to you please install our software twice in a row, without uninstalling it before or in between the subsequent installations.
Check your Joomla! and PHP version
We publish the compatibility of our software with Joomla! and PHP versions on our product pages. You can find a link on this page at the bottom of every page of our site.
Please remember that the PHP version your site is using may be different than the PHP version your host reports in their hosting control panel. If unsure, please refer to Joomla's System Information page. If you need to upgrade your PHP version please consult your host. The exact method to do that varies by the host.
Checking your temporary directory
First, we will have to make sure that you are using a valid temporary directory. Many sites are configured to use the system-wide (/tmp) directory or an invalid directory, causing installation problems.
You can change your temporary directory from your site's Global Configuration page. You need to enter the full filesystem path to Joomla's tmp folder. This is typically something like /home/mysite/public_html/tmp. If unsure please ask your host. This information is not visible from within your site's administrator using any Joomla-provided feature and there is no way for us to know it.
File ownership (Previously: Enable FTP)
Some shared servers run PHP as an Apache module. As a result, PHP runs under the same user as Apache which is a different user than the one your user account is owned and the one used when uploading files via FTP / SFTP. As a result, you end up with mixed ownership of your files, making it often impossible to install or update extensions.
If you find yourself on such a host it's a good time to move to a different, better set up host.
To give you a better idea, the PHP developers themselves have said that the PHP Apache module should not be used for shared hosting scenarios. It's something only really meant to be used for single site servers with the assumption that Apache is correctly configured for this use case. Solutions for PHP running as a different user for each site of a shared hosting server have existed since the early 00's. If your host has still not gotten wind of these problems and their respective solutions over a course of at least two decades they are probably unqualified to host any site, hence the recommendation to move to a different host.
Still problems?
If you still can't install our software and you are receiving messages regarding unwritable directories, inability to move files, or other similar file system-related error messages you can ask for our support but you already read what we're going to try. At best you can expect us to find out the most likely root cause and tell you what you have to ask your host to do to fix it.
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