Before installation, it is important to find out whether your website is compatible with CrawlTrack. Below are the requirements:

• Apache as the web server (not strictly required, but recommended).
• A minimum of PHP version 4.3 for server side scripting (required)/Dynamic PHP template-based.
• MySQL database (required).

Once you have met these requirements, follow the steps below:

Step 1. Download CrawlTrack here: http://www.crawltrack.net/download.php

Step 2. Once the zip file has been downloaded, unzip it.

Step 3. Prepare the file for uploading. Make sure the folder is two levels (crawltrack3-1-2 à crawltrack3-1-2 files). After unzipping, it is a three-level file structure: crawltrack3-1-2 à crawltrack3-1-2 à crawltrack3-1-2; you need to make sure it is a two-level folder. See the example below for how to make this a two-level structure:

Step 4. Open your favorite FTP client program and upload the folder to the root directory of your website.

Step 5. It is highly recommended to have a separate database for CrawlTrack. However, this is not required, and if your web host only allows you to use one MySQL database, this is still possible for CrawlTrack. Make sure you have the following database permissions/information:

• MySQL username
• MySQL password
• MySQL hostname
• MySQL database name

Step 6. Open your favorite browser, and in the address bar, type the path of the CrawlTrack folder. For example, if the name of the folder is “crawltrack3-1-2” and it is uploaded to the root directory of your website: http://www.yourwebsite.com , the path to be entered in the browser address bar will be: http://www.yourwebsite.com/crawltrack3-1-2. Then press the enter key.

Step 7. The Crawl track installation screen will then pop up. Select the appropriate language.

Step 8. You are then required to enter database information based on what you have prepared earlier. Enter it:

User MySQL à Your MySQL username

Password MySQL  à Your MySQL password

Host MySQL à Your MySQL hostname

Database MySQL à The name of your database

Step 9. Enter the website name. You can use the domain name. For example, if your domain is www.php-developer.org, enter “PHP Developer”

Step 10. In the site URL, enter the domain name without “http://” at the beginning and “/” at the end. So it will just be:

www.php-developer.org

Step 11. You need to set up your account. Enter your desired login and password.

Step 12. The installation is now complete; you can log in.

Step 13. You need to get the embed PHP code which you will need to integrate with your website. After logging in, go to your CrawlTrack administration page and click the icon with the “wrench” symbol:

In the administration page, click “Create tags to insert on your website.” When you see your website name, click “OK.” Use the standard tag; for example if your website domain name: www.thisisyourwebsite.com , below is what the standard tag looks like:

$crawltsite=1;

require_once("/home/www/thisisyourwebsite.com/crawltrack3-1-1/crawltrack.php");

It is possible to use one CrawlTrack installation for different domains; this will be covered in the second part.

Step 14. You need to embed/integrate CrawlTrack into your website's PHP- powered template to make it fully functional.

If you are using WordPress, find the footer.php file in your current template. Open it and then paste in the code. In the footer just before </body> is where you see most analytics code, like Google Analytics; embed the code below it:

<script type="text/javascript">

var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");

document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));

</script>

<script type="text/javascript">

try {

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxx");

pageTracker._trackPageview();

} catch(err) {}</script>

<?php

$crawltsite=1;

require_once("/home/www/thisisyourwebsite.com/crawltrack3-1-1/crawltrack.php");

?>

</body>

</html>

Above is an example of how to integrate CrawlTrack code into your template. Make sure that the embed code is within the PHP tags (<?php and ?> ) and the file name uses the .php extension, or it won’t work.

In some rare cases, it is possible to use CrawlTrack in .htm. For details, refer to the CrawlTrack documentation:

http://www.crawltrack.net/nonphppage.php

There are special cases in which CrawlTrack introduces some kind of incompatibility with the templates. For example, the original documentation states to install the tag on the index.php file at WordPress, but doing this will cause template distortion in sophisticated templates like Arras Theme. In this case, use another generalized PHP template file that is used by all URLs (in this case, footer.php).

You can even test to see if CrawlTrack is correctly integrated into your website by going to CrawlTrack's administration page, clicking on “Create a test crawler,” and then clicking that button to create a crawler. Follow the instructions on that page, and then open a new tag in your browser. Type in the home page URL of your domain.

After the home page is completely loaded on the browser, go to your CrawlTrack dashboard, refresh it, and then click “Crawlers.” Check to see if “Test-Crawltrack” is one of the items in the crawlers list. See screen shot below:

Be sure to come back next week for the second part of this tutorial.