Install a PHP School Management System

This is the real, complete process for installing the School Management System — a PHP (CodeIgniter 3) and MySQL application — on shared hosting or a local XAMPP setup. Follow it in order and you'll have it running in 15–30 minutes; every step below matches the product's actual file structure and its bundled documentation, not a generic template.

What you'll need

• PHP with the Mcrypt, MBString, DOM, GD, MySQL, PDO and cURL extensions enabled — all standard on any general-purpose PHP hosting plan
• MySQL 5+ or MariaDB equivalent
• Hosting with phpMyAdmin access, or XAMPP for local testing
• The product zip file — it includes a full database export, plus a bundled documentation folder with the same install steps below

Step 1 — Choose Your Hosting (or Set Up XAMPP Locally)

If you're testing before deploying, download XAMPP and start the Apache and MySQL modules from its control panel. For a real deployment, this product runs on any standard PHP + MySQL shared hosting — no VPS or special server configuration required. We use and recommend Hostinger for exactly this kind of install: PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, and FTP access are all included on their basic shared-hosting plans, which is all this product needs.

Step 2 — Extract and Upload the Files

Extract the downloaded zip. On XAMPP, copy the contents into htdocs. On shared hosting, upload everything to public_html via FTP (FileZilla is a common free client) or your host's file manager. Make sure index.php and .htaccess in the project root keep permission 644 after upload — some FTP clients reset this, and a wrong permission here is a common source of a blank page on first load.

Step 3 — Create Your MySQL Database

In your hosting control panel's database wizard (or XAMPP's phpMyAdmin at localhost/phpmyadmin), create a new database and a database user with full privileges on it. Note the database name, username, password, and host — you'll need all four in the next step.

Step 4 — Update the Database Connection Settings

Open application/config/database.php in the extracted files and set hostname, username, password, and database to match what you created in Step 3. On XAMPP, the default is host localhost, username root, with no password. While you're in the config folder, also check the base URL in application/config/config.php matches your actual domain (or local folder URL) — the product's own documentation calls this out specifically, since a wrong base URL breaks asset loading and redirects.

Step 5 — Import the Database

The product's database export is bundled inside the extracted files at documentation/database/database.sql — a separate folder from the installer SQL naming other products in our catalog use, so double-check you're importing this exact file. In phpMyAdmin, select the database you created in Step 3, open the Import tab, choose that file, and click Go. This creates every table the application needs, already populated with the default admin account and reference data.

Step 6 — Log In and Change the Default Password

Visit your domain (or localhost/your-folder-name on XAMPP) in a browser. The imported database seeds a default super admin account — email superadmin@gsms.com, password 123456. Log in with that, then change the password immediately from the admin panel before entering any real student or staff data.

Common installation errors

Stuck on something not covered here?

Email support is included with your purchase — reply with your payment ID and what you're seeing, and we'll help you get it running.