troubles while installing PW on localhost, no admin page

[floko]

Hi everyone,

I just installed PW on my old notebook (Win 8.1, fresh XAMPP installed) via the latest master zip package. Worked my way around issues with htaccess (details below*), ignored the missing GD2.0 library and ended up with a working default front end page, but no admin section. The standard link from the last installation page leads to a non-existing URL. I cannot not find any subdirectory called /processwire or /admin to enter the admin page URL manually. There *is* a subfolder called "wire", but no "index.php" therein.

Any idea where to look next?
Thanks!
 

*htaccess changes: had to remove all restrictive lines from the default .htaccess file before I could proceed with the installation ( "require all denied" and "deny from all").

 

 

[Jan Romero]

Welcome to the forums! Are the site and wire directories directly inside htdocs, or within a subdirectory? You may need to check section 8A in your .htaccess.

[floko]

Hi Jan, thanks for your welcome and your quick reply!

/wire and /site are both subdirectories, the structure is /htdocs/processwire-master/... 
.htaccess is also located within /processwire-master

Should I move all files and folders up to /htdocs? Or install everything anew?

[Jan Romero]

2 minutes ago, floko said:

Should I move all files and folders up to /htdocs?

Yes, if you only plan to access PW on http://localhost I would just do that. If you want it to accessible at http://localhost/processwire-master I believe you need to add RewriteBase /processwire-master/ to section 8A in the .htaccess file.

The processwire-master directory is only put there by GitHub, it doesn’t really “belong” to ProcessWire per se.

[floko]

I see, thank you! Accordingly, I moved all files & folders up.
In addition, I enabled GD library in php.ini (because missing GD triggered a warning during the installation process) and restarted Apache.
The standard default home page loads (although it only does so when line 5 in htaccess "require all denied" is commented out)

Still I have no idea where to look for the admin section.
There is a "/templates-admin" folder below "/wire", so that seems to be a good place to start. I'd expect a "wire/index.php", but there is only an "index.config.php" that obviously is a multi-domain configuration file...

Edit:
I double checked with the official file structure (listed here https://processwire.com/docs/start/structure/files/). Even there, "/wire/templates-admin" is the only mention of anything admin-related (but only "Templates, stylesheets and scripts for the admin control panel", not the control panel itself). 
In every install instruction I read, the admin control panel should live in "http://localhost/processwire". But as there is no such folder, I don't get it ?

Edited August 5 by floko

[Jan Romero]

It’s not a folder, but the URL http://localhost/processwire should be accessible and show a login form. ProcessWire dynamically handles such URLs using, among other things, the .htaccess rewrite* directives.

I believe you’re asked to optionally rename the admin URL during the installation. Some people like to do so to obscure the login page from attackers. If you have entered a custom admin URL and forgotten it, you can check the database table “pages”. It should be ID 2.

But maybe just try reinstalling from htdocs. It shouldn’t give you any htaccess problems IIRC. I spun up a PW installation on XAMPP on Windows only a couple weeks ago and I don’t recall having to change anything apart from enabling some optional php.ini features ?

[floko]

Ha! That did the trick! ? Thanks a lot!

Went through the whole installation process a third time, and now everything worked out fine.
The .htaccess file in root now looked *completely* different, must have had something to do with that. ?

Thanks again for your help!