Installing ChurchCRM on cPanel / Shared Hosting

1. Log in to your hosting cPanel.
2. Subdomain: To use e.g. http://churchcrm.mywebsite.org, create the subdomain "churchcrm" in cPanel → Subdomains.
3. Subdirectory: To use e.g. http://mywebsite.org/churchcrm, create the folder "churchcrm" in your web root (often public_html/churchcrm) using File Manager.
4. Web root: To use e.g. http://myChurchCRM.org, install in web root (public_html/). When extracting the zip, place the contents of the "churchcrm" folder into web root.
5. In cPanel → MySQL Databases, create a new database (e.g. myusername_churchcrm).
6. Add a user to the database (or create a new MySQL user) and grant All Privileges to that database.
7. Download the latest release from GitHub Releases.
8. Upload the ChurchCRM files to your site.

FTP upload: 9. Extract the zip on your computer (it contains a single folder "churchcrm"). 10. Use an FTP client (e.g. FileZilla) to upload the contents of the "churchcrm" folder to your chosen directory (subdomain, subdirectory, or web root). 11. Set file permissions: files 644, directories 755. See File System Permissions.

Or using cPanel File Manager: 9. In File Manager, upload the ChurchCRM zip, then extract it. Move the contents of the "churchcrm" folder into your target directory. 10. Set permissions: files 644, directories 755. See File System Permissions. Some hosts set these automatically.

Open your site in a browser (e.g. https://mywebsite.org/churchcrm or https://churchcrm.mywebsite.org). The setup wizard will guide you through first-time configuration.

After setup, log in as admin with password changeme and change the password when prompted. Keep at least one user with administrative privileges.

If setup fails, see Logging & Diagnostics for how to gather logs and Troubleshooting for common fixes. You can also ask for help on GitHub Discussions.

Test before importing real data

Use the built-in demo data import from Admin (if available) or import a small CSV to verify the system. See Data Import.