# Askbot Project Documentation

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# Installing Askbot

The latest stable version of askbot can be installed from the official Python Package Index (PyPI)

There are several methods to install Askbot. The recommended choice of the method depends on whether you are planning to modify the source code and/or templates or not.

## Would like to use the package as is?

If so - then the best tool for that is pip, the second best choice is easy_install:

    pip install askbot
    easy_install askbot #if you prefer easy_install

Both commands automatically install Askbot and the dependency packages. Pip is a significant improvement upon easy_install and is strongly recommended.

If you do not have either of those tools - download the askbot archive from PyPI, unzip and untar it, then run:

    python setup.py install #this is actually equivalent to running easy_install

## Intend to customize the forum?

In this case the best option is to clone the code from the development repository:

    git clone git://github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-devel.git <project_name>

where <project_name> should be some very distinct name.

Then jump into the new directory and run:

    python setup.py develop #the develop option will not install askbot into the python site packages directory

Note

setup.py installs the Python modules required by Askbot into the proper directory (e.g. /usr/bin/python2.6/site-packages).

## How to install into custom directories

On the shared hosts and in some other cases it is better to install python packages in some place other than the system package directory. If that’s your situation - use the virtualenv tool:

    virtualenv /path/to/some/directory

Virtualenv will provide a dedicated python interpreter and pip just for that isolated environment. Both will be available within directory /path/to/some/dir/bin. Please, use them to run operations shown above.

Under windows, please install mysql-python windows binary package manually.

Most likely, by this time you will have askbot software installed. However, in some cases one of the dependency packages might fail to install. This document will help you find those components.

When you have all packages installed, please proceed to the initial configuration section.