GTD PHP Steps to Install

I never really revealed my new year's resolution this year. That's because I haven't followed Larry's steps to make it SMART yet. What I want to to is become a GTD person. A 'Getting Things Done' organized person.

In The GTD book, David Allen says that we need a trusted tool to record our Next Actions so that our brain can relax. I've wanted a web-tool to do this, but everything I've found was set to just run on my PC or a thumb-drive. I want to easily access my GTD tool from home or work. Today at LifeHack there was a link to a new GTD tool running on PHP.

I downloaded it and started looking at installation. All the instructions are based on installing an SQL server on your own Mac. Ack! I'm no PHP/SQL geek, but how card could it be? Here's what I had to do to install it on my website.

1. Created database on the server using tools from my host's DirectAdmin program. Made sure to note username and password (note username and database name format is like this: b2blog_gtd).
2. Edited the config.sample.php file per the instructions, but also modified the database name, then saved as config.php.
3. Uploaded all the files to a directory on the server (you can probably guess the name of the directory).
4. Tested the index.php page and remembered I also have to create tables in the database.
5. Used web host's tool myphpadmin and clicked to load an external SQL script. This script is part of the files that come with GTD_PHP.
6. After getting error messages, I edited the sql script to correct two things: 1. corrected database name (shows up only twice, I think); 2. corrected one line in the script that wasn't compatible with my version of SQL.
7. Re-ran the script until it worked.
8. Used my host's tool to password protect the directory. If I wasn't writing this post, I probably wouldn't have done this.
   

My version of SQL is older (4.0.16) and what I had to do is change the last line of each table-creation step to read like this:

) TYPE=MyISAM CHARACTER SET latin1;

It took me a while to figure this out, so I hope I can help someone else whose host isn't running the latest and greatest.

Now, if I can finish the book and do the SMART steps, I can start getting things done...online!