Installing ConfTool With the Installer

1. Select Your Installer Language

Select your preferred language for the installer (see image 1).

2. Compatibility Check

An automatic compatibility check verifies whether your server settings and performance are suitable for running ConfTool Standard (see image 2). You can find detailed test results in the linked system report.

If your system is not compatible, please check Step 3 of our detailed installation instructions. 

3. Download & Directory Setup

A permission check verifies whether the web server has the required permissions for the current directory. The server needs permissions to upload and write files to the current directory and to create subdirectories (see image 3). 

To change the write permissions for the directory, you can for instance use a shell and call command “chmod u+rwx .”. Alternatively, you can use a file transfer manager like WinSCP or FileZilla and set the folder to be writable for everyone (see image 4).

If all permissions are correctly configured, you can proceed with the download of the installation file. Once the download is complete, the installation file automatically unpacks and creates the directory structure (see image 5). 

All non-public files will be stored in a directory with a random name to prevent direct access via the web server. 

4. Database Connection and Installation

Before you create a new database for your ConfTool Standard installation, you'll need to test the connection between your web server and the database system (see image 6). A database user is needed who has permissions to create tables and write to them for your database. ConfTool requires its own dedicated database. You can either select an existing database (which must be empty) or create a new database to complete the installation. Please do not use a database that is already in use by other applications. 

Once the connection to the database server has been successfully established, please create the new database and the required tables (see image 7). Alternatively, you can use an existing empty database and create the required tables.

Please note that ConfTool supports the database systems MySQL and MariaDB. Other databases are not supported.

5. E-Mail Settings

Enter the e-mail address that will be used to send e-mails from the ConfTool system and your SMTP mail server parameters. Please test the connection first (see image 8).

As soon as the connection to the SMTP mail server has been successfully established, please request a confirmation code for verifying your e-mail information for the ConfTool installation (see image 9). Then enter the confirmation code you received by e-mail (see image 10).

If you have an SMTP server on “localhost”, you may leave the username and password empty.
We recommend using encrypted transfer if the SMTP server is not “localhost”.

6. Quick Start Guide

After completing all previous steps, the installation of ConfTool Standard on your server is complete. You can now proceed with the configuration of the system in the back office. 

Our quick start guide helps you to configure some basic parameters.
You can directly set up your administrator account for secure access to your ConfTool installation (see image 11).

ConfTool consists of three main modules: “Basic Settings”, “Submission & Reviewing” and “Participant Registration”. Please select which modules you would like to activate. Furthermore, select the default language for your ConfTool system: English or German (see image 12). Other languages are available on request and must be set in the configuration file conftool.conf.php, see Step 6 of our detailed installation instructions.

You will also find links to helpful resources that will guide you through the full configuration process (see image 13). Please note that the configuration documentation on our website was written for ConfTool Pro, although some general concepts may also help you with the configuration of ConfTool Standard.

Now you can login and configure ConfTool Standard (see image 14). We recommend going through each section on the "Settings" screen from top to bottom and making the necessary changes to the options in each section sequentially (see image 15). If you do not understand the purpose of an option, it's usually safe to keep the default value.
You can also create as many additional user accounts in the backend as needed (see image 16).