Installing CollectiveAccess - Providence on macOS

CollectiveAccess - Providence is a powerful open source collections management system that provides robust support for metadata standards and integration with a variety of external systems. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of installing CollectiveAccess - Providence on macOS.

Prerequisites

Before we begin the installation process, ensure that your system meets the following prerequisites:

macOS 10.10 or above
Apache web server
PHP version 7.1.3 or greater with required extensions installed
MySQL database
Access to the command line interface

Step-by-Step guide

Download the latest version of CollectiveAccess - Providence from the official website at https://collectiveaccess.org/releases/ and save it to a local directory on your computer.
Extract the downloaded zip file and move the extracted folder to the root directory of your web server. In this example, we will use the default document root /Library/WebServer/Documents/.
Rename the extracted folder to providence. This will serve as the name of your CollectiveAccess installation.
Open a terminal window and navigate to the root directory of your web server by running the command: $ cd /Library/WebServer/Documents.
Run the following command to change the ownership of the providence folder to your web server user. Replace username with your web server username:
```
$ sudo chown -R username:staff providence
```
Next, create a new MySQL database for your CollectiveAccess installation. Open Terminal and enter the following command. This will open the MySQL command-line interface prompt.
```
$ mysql -u root -p
```
If you have set up a different user other than root, please use the credentials of that user.
Once you enter the MySQL prompt, enter the following command to create a new database. In this example, we will use myca_db as the name of the database.
```
create database myca_db;
```
Create a new MySQL user with full privileges to the new database. Replace myca_user and password with your desired username and password respectively:
```
CREATE USER 'myca_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON myca_db.* TO 'myca_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
```
In a file browser, navigate to the providence/app/conf folder and rename the file app.conf.sample to app.conf.
Open app.conf in a text editor of your choosing and set the following parameters:

Set base_url to the URL of your CollectiveAccess installation. For example, http://localhost/providence.
Set database_name to the name of the MySQL database you created in step 7. In this example, myca_db.
Set database_user to the username of the MySQL user created in step 8. In this example, myca_user.
Set database_password to the password of the MySQL user created in step 8.

Save the changes to app.conf.
Open your web browser and navigate to your CollectiveAccess installation URL. For example, http://localhost/providence. You should see the install screen.
Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation process. You will be prompted to enter information such as the MySQL password and admin user information.
Once the installation is complete, you can log in to CollectiveAccess by navigating to the base URL of your installation and clicking the "Log In" button.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed CollectiveAccess - Providence on macOS. With this powerful collections management tool, you can now manage your digital collections with ease.