How to Install Access to Memory (AtoM) on Windows 10

Access to Memory (AtoM) is a web-based application for managing and providing access to archival descriptions and digital objects. In this tutorial, we will go through the steps to install AtoM on a Windows 10 machine.

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure that you have the following prerequisites installed:

Apache web server (version 2.4 or later)
MySQL database (version 5.5 or later)
PHP programming language (version 7.2 or later)

If you don't have any of the above prerequisites installed, you can download and install them from the official websites:

Apache: https://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
MySQL: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/installer/
PHP: https://windows.php.net/download/

Steps

Download AtoM

Visit the official AtoM website at https://www.accesstomemory.org/download/ and download the latest stable version of AtoM. We recommend downloading the ZIP package.

Extract the ZIP package

Extract the downloaded ZIP package to a directory on your local machine, e.g., C:\atom.

Create a virtual host

AtoM requires a virtual host in Apache. Open the httpd.conf file located in C:\Apache24\conf and add the following lines at the end of the file:

# Access to Memory (AtoM)
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName atom.local
    DocumentRoot "C:\atom\atom"
</VirtualHost>

Save the file and restart Apache.

Create a MySQL user and database

Create a new MySQL user with all privileges and a new database. You can use a tool like phpMyAdmin to do this. Make sure to note down the username, password, and database name for later use.

Configure AtoM

AtoM comes with a sample configuration file config/Configuration.yml.sample. Copy this file to config/Configuration.yml and open it in a text editor like Notepad++.

Change the following lines:

databases:
  connection:
    dsn: 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=atom;charset=utf8'
    username: 'root'
    password: ''

To:

databases:
  connection:
    dsn: 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=[database_name];charset=utf8'
    username: '[mysql_user]'
    password: '[mysql_password]'

Replace [database_name], [mysql_user], and [mysql_password] with the actual values you noted down in step 4.

Save the file.

Visit the AtoM web installer

Open your web browser and visit http://atom.local/install. Follow the installation wizard to complete the installation.

Start using AtoM!

Once the installation is complete, you can use AtoM by visiting http://atom.local in your web browser.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have gone through the steps to install AtoM on a Windows 10 machine. With AtoM installed, you can manage and provide access to archival descriptions and digital objects.