Tutorial: How to Install Known on Windows 11

In this tutorial, we will walk you through the process of installing Known on your Windows 11 machine.

Prerequisites

Before beginning with the installation process, make sure you have the following:

• A Windows 11 machine with admin access
• PHP 5.6 or higher installed on your machine
• MySQL or MariaDB database
• Git
• A web server such as Apache or NGINX installed and configured on your machine

Step 1: Download Known

First, you need to visit https://withknown.com/download/ and download the latest version of Known to your Windows 11 machine.

You can either download it directly from the website or you can use Git to clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/idno/Known.git

Step 2: Install Composer

Known uses Composer to manage its dependencies, so you need to install Composer on your machine. You can download Composer from https://getcomposer.org/download/.

Once downloaded, follow the installation steps to install Composer.

Step 3: Install Known Dependencies

To install all of the dependencies required by Known, navigate to the directory where you downloaded Known and run the following command:

composer install

This will install all of the dependencies required by Known into a vendor directory.

Step 4: Create a MySQL Database

To install Known, you need to have a MySQL or MariaDB database to store your data. To create a new database, you can use any MySQL/MariaDB client such as phpMyAdmin or MySQL Workbench.

Create a new database with a name of your choice and make sure to note down the database name, username, and password for future use.

Step 5: Configure Known

Once you have downloaded and installed all dependencies, navigate to the directory where you downloaded Known and create a new file called .htaccess.

In the .htaccess file, add the following code:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

Next, rename the file config.ini.sample to config.ini and open it in a text editor.

Update the following values in the config.ini file:

• db_host: Set this to the hostname or IP address of your MySQL/MariaDB database server.
• db_name: Set this to the name of the database you created in Step 4.
• db_user: Set this to the username you created for the database in Step 4.
• db_pass: Set this to the password you created for the database in Step 4.
• base_url: Set this to the URL where you will access Known.
• session_secret: Set this to a random string to secure your session.

Step 6: Configure Apache or NGINX

Next, you need to configure your web server (Apache or NGINX) to serve your Known installation.

For Apache, create a new virtual host configuration file and add the following configuration:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/path/to/known/directory"
    ServerName yourdomain.com

    <Directory "/path/to/known/directory">
        Options FollowSymlinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Replace /path/to/known/directory with the path to the directory where you installed Known and yourdomain.com with your domain name or IP address.

For NGINX, create a new server block and add the following configuration:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yourdomain.com;

    root /path/to/known/directory;

    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param PHP_VALUE "upload_max_filesize = 50M \n post_max_size=50M";
    }
}

Replace /path/to/known/directory with the path to the directory where you installed Known and yourdomain.com with your domain name or IP address.

Step 7: Run Known Installation

Once you have completed all the above steps, navigate to your input the URL you configured in base_url.

This will start the Known installation process. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Known on your Windows 11 machine.