Joomla Stalling at Installation Stage | PHP Session Storage

stone walled

There has been a few reports about not being able to install Joomla because it stalls at the installation and you can't get past the first installer step.

Whilst there are many reasons why this could happen, most times I have come accross it it has been down to the server setup and Joomla not having access to the PHP sessions directory.

If it can't save a session then you will never get past the first step. So lets configure a session direcory we can write to without having to contact our host, who will most likely blame somebody or something else whilst they scramble behind the scenes (hopefully).

PHP sessions are set in the main php.ini file, but they can be overridden in your .htaccess file

First we need to know the server path to the root of the domain. You can usually get this from your cpanel but if not you can use this.

Once you have the root path, open up your .htaccess file and add the following line

php_value session.save_path /home/path/html/phpsessions

You need to add here your server root path and then make up a directory where the sessions will be saved.

Of course, you then need to create the directory you have just referenced. This is where the sessions will now be stored, assuming that your host allows you to override this parameter (not really any reasons why they would block it).

So once that is done, give the installation another go. If it doesn't work then you have another problem :)