How to Install Collective Access - Providence on Windows 11

Collective Access is a free and open-source collections management software that is widely used by cultural heritage institutions, such as museums, archives, and libraries. Providence is the name of the web-based user interface for managing data in Collective Access. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps of installing Collective Access - Providence on Windows 11.

Prerequisites

Before installing Collective Access - Providence, you need to have the following software installed on your Windows 11 computer:

  • Apache HTTP server (version 2.2 or later)
  • MySQL database (version 5.5 or later)
  • PHP (version 5.2.4 or later)

You can install these software packages using the WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) or XAMPP (Cross-platform, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl) packages, which provide an all-in-one solution for setting up a web server on Windows.

Step 1: Download Collective Access - Providence

To download Collective Access - Providence, go to the Collective Access website and click on the "Download" button under the "CollectiveAccess Providence" section. This will open a new page where you can choose the latest stable version of Providence.

Once you have selected the version, download the zip file to your computer.

Step 2: Extract the Files

Once the zip file has been downloaded, extract its contents to a folder on your computer. You can use a file extraction tool like 7-Zip or WinRAR for this.

Step 3: Configure Apache

Next, you need to configure Apache to serve Collective Access - Providence. Open the Apache configuration file (httpd.conf) located in the "conf" folder of your Apache installation directory, and add the following lines at the end of the file:

Listen 80

#Declare document root for Providence
DocumentRoot "C:\path\to\providence"

#Define the directory for Providence
<Directory "C:\path\to\providence">
  AllowOverride All
  Require all granted
</Directory>

Make sure to replace the "C:\path\to\providence" with the path to the directory where you extracted the Collective Access - Providence files.

Save the changes to the configuration file and restart Apache.

Step 4: Create a MySQL Database

Before installing Collective Access - Providence, you need to create a new MySQL database. To do this, open the MySQL console or a GUI tool like phpMyAdmin and execute the following SQL commands:

CREATE DATABASE providence;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON providence.* TO 'providence_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';

Remember to replace "your_password" with a strong password of your choice.

Step 5: Install Collective Access - Providence

To install Collective Access - Providence, open a web browser and navigate to:

http://localhost/

This will bring up the Collective Access - Providence installation wizard. Follow the instructions on the screen to install the software using the MySQL database you created in step 4.

During the installation, you will be asked to provide the database connection details, such as the host, username, password, and database name. Use the following values:

  • Host: localhost
  • Username: providence_user
  • Password: your_password
  • Database Name: providence

Step 6: Verify the Installation

Once the installation is complete, you can verify that Collective Access - Providence is working by navigating to:

http://localhost/providence

This will bring up the login screen for Providence. Enter the default username "admin" and password "admin" to log in.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Collective Access - Providence on Windows 11. Now you can start managing your collections using this powerful open-source software.