Elgg is an open-source social networking platform. I was installing it lately when I encountered this error. I thought there was an error in the installation script because there’s a folder named “actions” not “action” as indicated in the error message. I even tried renaming that folder to remove the “s” but I got a ‘Call to undefined function‘ error. I checked my PHP version and its 5.2.6. I realized it has something to do with the directory access.

Solution
Read the INSTALL.TXT included in the root folder of your installation. It says:

A note on settings and .htaccess

The Elgg installer will try (yeah try harder!) and create two files for you:

* engine/settings.php, which contains the database settings for your installation
* .htaccess, which allows Elgg to generate dynamic URLs

If these files can’t be automatically generated, for example because you don’t have the correct directory permissions, Elgg will tell you how to create them. If, for some reason, this won’t work (Yup, this didn’t work alright!), you will need to:

* Copy engine/settings.example.php to engine/settings.php, open it up in a text editor and fill in your database details
* Copy /htaccess_dist to /.htaccess

That’s it, simply copy or rename htaccess_dist to .htaccess and it will work. My advice to all of you reading this article, next time read the installation manual first. And that includes me, darn!

Oh yah, after doing this, try to restart the installation by going into your site again. Elgg’s installer is NOT very user-friendly.


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