System requirements

Elxis can be used in a wide range of platforms and operating systems. This document lists the minimum system requirements needed in order for Elxis to function properly. If you have a question or this document does not cover all the issues regarding Elxis system requirements, contact Elxis Team.

Operating system

Elxis can run on Linux/Unix, Macintosh or Microsoft Windows. We recommend Linux as the server operating system. Any Linux distribution is fine (Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu, Slack, Fedora, etc).

Web Server

Elxis can run on any PHP enabled web server. We recommend the usage of the Apache web server (version 2.0+). Elxis is also well tested and usable on Microsoft IIS. An excellent alternative to Apache is the Lighttpd web server. Mod Rewrite is required by Apache if you wish to enable SEO PRO (recommended). For IIS you should use the Ionic Isapi Rewrite filter and for Lighttpd you can have SEO PRO URLs with the help of the Lua scripting language. See also our alternative web servers list.

PHP

Elxis CMS, since version 2008.1, is coded using the PHP 5 style. We recommend PHP 5.2 or higher. Elxis will not run under PHP 4.x! If you have PHP 4.x and you wish to use Elxis CMS either update the PHP to version 5.x, or use Elxis 2008.0. Elxis is a large CMS with many features that needs some extra PHP memory than a normal PHP script. The minimum PHP memory for an Elxis default installation is 8MB although we recommend 16MB or higher depending on the site size and the number of the enabled extensions. Modern servers have plenty of memory, edit your server's PHP.ini and allocate some more memory to PHP if you wish to be sure (you can raise it up to 256MB for example). Elxis does not require any special PHP library to be enabled on the web server. It runs perfectly on the default PHP installation.

If you run PHP under safe_mode then Elxis will face problems handling files. As the safe_mode directive is going to be removed from PHP in version 6.0 we strongly recommend you to disable safe mode. There are others, more elegant, ways to protect your web applications. If you get fatal error messages such as Open Basedir restriction in effect then, open_basedir is enabled in your web server but the PHP temporary drectory is not properly set up. To solve this issue set the PHP temporary directory to a folder inside the allowed by open_basedir path.

Database

Elxis CMS uses the ADOdb database Abstraction library to handle database. ADOdb supports many different types and versions of databases. Currently elxis support MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle databases. The Oracle support is experimental. Why we use ADOdb? Because it is an excellent library, independent from the server software, that allows us to handle diferrent database types in easy. If you need to make ADOdb run faster try combining it with APC.

Browser

Any modern browser is fine for Elxis CMS. We recommend the usage of the Firefox web browser. Other good browsers are: Safari, Opera, Chrome, and Internet explorer 8. Please do not use the old Internet Explorer 6 as it does not render CSS right. Especially in Elxis administration you should have cookies and javascript enabled in your browser for Elxis to work. Administer your Elxis site with Firefox, it is faster, more secure and renders perfectly elxis CSS.

New to Elxis CMS? Visit the Start with Elxis category at Elxis wiki.