How I installed OpenEMR in a webhosting server

3 months after successful installation of OpenEMR in XAMPP and WindowsXP, I decided to install the package in a web hosting server. As this will also be an experiment, I decided to install it on one of my existing website, Hearing Guide.com. Although it's an informative website, it is also a kind of "sandbox website", where I did some experiment on installing php base program on it. One of it is this one.

Well, it is not as easy as extracting the installation package in the public_html of the web server. Few things I have to do before the things gets running. First, my web hosting services, Exabytes.com.my runs PHP5 for the web server. As you know, OpenEMR will not run on a machine with PHP5 on board. I need to switch it to PHP4 to make sure OpenEMR run smoothly.

However, when I contact my web hosting company to request for the switch, it seems that the website is currently hosted on a new server, which only have PHP5 on board. So, I have to write them an email for the request to migrate back to my website to the old server, which have PHP4. The process went smoothly, as I requested that the migration process to be done at midnight. On the next morning, when I log in to the internet and my cPanel, I notice that the migration is successful. An email from the Exabytes technical department also confirm this.

This morning, I reinstall OpenEMR in the old server, (which runs PHP4) hoping that it will run smoothly. I extracted the package, and navigate the folder so that the Hearing Guide.com website is not interrupted. So, the URL looks like this: http://www.hearing-guide.com/openemr.

After the installation, I get the login page. I was delighted. However, when I enter to the first page, the calendar did not show up! No problem with the navigation bar and the lower frame of the page but only at the center, where a calendar should be.

The error message showed this:

Warning: Smarty error: problem writing 'modules/PostCalendar/pntemplates/compiled/default^views^day^default.html.' in /home/hearingg/public_html/openemr/interface/main/calendar/
modules/PostCalendar/pnincludes/Smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 589

I did post the problems in the official OpenEMR forum today, hopefully dr Bowen could help me out...

I will post my progress back in this blog.