The information architecture on this site has serious issues; it's almost impossible to work out. You would really benefit from use cases : someone with no site wants to install Silverstripe, someone with a static site wants to bring that into Silverstripe, someone who is on another CMS wants to move over to Silverstripe. See how your site works from their perspectives.

I currently have a static site I want to bring over to Silverstripe, but I need basic information (such as how to securely install the CMS).

As far as I can tell, the installation needs to occur in a public folder with high permissions ratings. To me, that is far from secure. How do I securely install Silverstripe?

If I install Silverstripe, do I immediately wipe out (some/all/none) of the contents already present, including the current .htaccess file?

On this page here, you say "visit the URL". Which URL is that? Is that set up in the folder-name/install.php page?
http://doc.silverstripe.com/doku.php?id=tutorial:1-building-a-basic-site

Does it matter whereabout in your directory system that you upload and install from? Does it need to be directly from 'www' ('html_public') or can it be higher?

Can you rename the extracted folder name from silverstripe-v2.0 to CMS without causing difficulty to the installation process?

Thanks

What I have done so far is to set up a password protected area under the html_public folder, and done the installation there.

I have one problem left with the installation - PHP 5. The server I am have 4.4.2 installed by default but have access via a line in the .htaccess file (Action application/x-httpd-php5 /php5.fcgi)

Is this good enough to allow access to Silverstripe? The current installation page says no. Is there anything I can do about that?

> The information architecture on this site has serious issues; it's almost impossible to work out. You would really benefit from use cases

agreed. its hard to cover both "company website" and "open-source portal" in one site. i'd opt for restructuring some information currently located in "community" and "download" into a new toplevel-entry "documentation". this makes for a more obvious start-point. what do you think?

>I have one problem left with the installation - PHP 5. The server I am have 4.4.2 installed by default but have access via a line in the .htaccess file (Action application/x-httpd-php5 /php5.fcgi)

switching your domain to php5 is required - can you run phpinfo() and make sure that the switch went through, and you see php 5.x.x as a versionnumber?

Did you guys ever consider splitting into two sites? Have a site for SilverStripe the company with services and portfolio and whatnot, and have a seperate SilverStripe-the-CMS community site for forums and documentation.
Then there might be room to present use-case based navigation from the home page - big buttons that say "Want to install SilverStripe?" or "Want to hack the hell out of SilverStripe?" - as well as more conventional menus for people who already know their way around.

Good ideas, thanks guys.

Did Ingo's help get you to install SilverStripe?

It feels like I take two steps forwards and one step back.

The PHP5 thing was correct, and that has now been fixed. Everything looked OKish so I pressed the install button, only to be halted due to:

mod_rewrite doesn't appear to be working. Make sure:

* mod_rewrite is enabled in your httpd.conf
* AllowOverride is enabled for the current path.

Please check these options, then refresh this page.If you believe that your configuration is correct, click here to proceed anyway.
Warning: Unknown: open(/tmp/sess_3707bf6501c71321b3d7fdd0bff04736, O_RDWR) failed: Permission denied (13) in Unknown on line 0

Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (/tmp) in Unknown on line 0

I think I am already using mod_rewrite because I already use redirects (aren't they a part of mod_rewrite?) eg. ErrorDocument 403 http://www.domainName.com.au/error403.html

What is the recommended course of action at this point?

Edit: I have checked with the Server Admin and mod_rewrite is enabled.
Should I click where it says to 'proceed anyway'?

Edit: Yes. Apparently it is now successfully installed.

Great to hear it's working for you now :-)