Introduction

Lychee is an elegant and powerful photo management system that allows you to host your own photo gallery. This guide will help you install Lychee on a Windows VPS.

Prerequisites

• A Windows VPS with administrative access. You can consider using a service like NetCloud24.
• Access to PowerShell or Command Prompt.
• Basic knowledge of server administration.
• Installed web server (Apache or Nginx), PHP, and MySQL or MariaDB.

Step 1: Download Lychee

1. Go to the Lychee official website.

2. Download the latest version of Lychee.

Step 2: Extract Lychee Files

1. After downloading, extract the contents of the ZIP file to a directory of your choice (e.g., C:\lychee).

Step 3: Configure Web Server

1. If you’re using Apache, ensure that the following modules are enabled:

• mod_rewrite
• mod_headers
• mod_ssl (if using HTTPS)

2. Create a new virtual host configuration for Lychee:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "C:/lychee/"
    ServerName yourdomain.com

    <Directory "C:/lychee/">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Replace yourdomain.com with your domain or server IP address.

Step 4: Create Database

1. Open MySQL Command Line or use a database management tool like phpMyAdmin.

2. Create a new database for Lychee:

CREATE DATABASE lychee;
CREATE USER 'lycheeuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON lychee.* TO 'lycheeuser'@'localhost';

Replace your_password with a strong password of your choice.

Step 5: Configure Lychee

1. Navigate to the Lychee directory and locate the Lychee/Config.php file.

2. Open it in a text editor and update the database connection settings:

$_CONFIG['db']['host'] = 'localhost';
$_CONFIG['db']['name'] = 'lychee';
$_CONFIG['db']['user'] = 'lycheeuser';
$_CONFIG['db']['password'] = 'your_password';

Step 6: Set Up File Permissions

Ensure the web server has write permissions for the following folders:

• C:/lychee/uploads
• C:/lychee/preferences

Step 7: Start Web Server

1. Restart your web server to apply changes.

2. Open a web browser and navigate to http://yourdomain.com (or your server IP).

3. You should be greeted with the Lychee setup page. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

Conclusion

You have successfully installed the Lychee Photo Management System on your Windows VPS! You can now start uploading and managing your photos.

Resources

• Lychee Documentation
• Lychee Official Website
• MySQL Download
• PHP Download