Step 1. Configure Apache and PHP

Before you download and install Magento, you need to configure your local server to work with the CMS Magento.

Firstly, we need to create configuration file for a virtual host in the /etc/apache2/sites-available/ folder. The configuration file has *.conf filename extension. In this tutorial we will name it as magentotest.com.conf . You can name it as you please.

Execute this command in the terminal:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/magentotest.com.conf

For the virtual host to work, we need to add several directives in this config file. Type these directives, save and close the file. If you use your hostname, make sure you make changes to all the directives.

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@beprogrammer.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/magentotest.com/public_html
ServerName magentotest.com
DirectoryIndex index.php
ServerAlias www.magentotest.com
ErrorLog /var/www/magentotest.com/logs/error_log
CustomLog /var/www/magentotest.com/logs/access_log common
<Directory /var/www/magentotest.com/public_html>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Use the following command to enable a new site with Apache.

sudo a2ensite magentotest.com.conf

Create magentotest.com folder in the /var/www/ directory and then in this new folder create 2 folders: logs and public_html.

magentotest

It remains to add the entry to the hosts file. To do this, use the following command:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

And then register new site name. Add this line in the end of file:

127.0.0.1 magentotest.com

Now restart Apache for the changes to take effect.

service apache2 reload

If everything went well, then at this point you already have a fully-prepared virtual host.

Secondly, you need to install PHP, if it was not installed, and configure it. Execute the following commands in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install php5 php5-mhash php5-mcrypt 
sudo apt-get install php5-curl php5-cli php5-mysql php5-gd
sudo apt-get install php5-xsl
sudo apt-get install php5-intl
sudo php5enmod xsl
sudo php5enmod mcrypt
cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
sudo ln -s ../mods-available/rewrite.load

You also need to install phpMyAdmin.

sudo apt-get install mysql-client mysql-server
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

Enter: Apache2, Yes, password 3 times

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Append next text:

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf
ServerName localhost

Increase memory_limit to 2048M:

sudo gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Restart Apache2.

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod headers
sudo service apache2 restart

Check access to phpMyAdmin panel http://localhost/phpmyadmin/index.php

Step 2. Create a MySQL Database for Magento to use

Magento uses a MySQL database to store and manage data. At the previous step, the phpMyAdmin was installed. Now we need to create a database and a user to work with it. Open the terminal and log in to the root account.

mysql -u root -p

Enter the password after this command. If the log-in was successful, then you will get access to the database administrator console. First of all, you need to create a database. In our example, it will be called magentotest.

Execute this command in the command line:

create database magentotest;

To manage the database, you must create a user. In our example, username is 'magentotest_user' and password is 'password'. To do this, execute the following command:

create user magentotest_user@localhost identified by 'password';

The new user must have the rights to the created database. Grant him privileges with the following command:

grant all privileges on magentotest.* to magentotest_user@localhost identified by 'password';

Now flush privileges and exit from mysql command line.

flush privileges;
exit

Step 3. Download and install sample data.

The next step is to download and install sample data. This is an optional step, but we strongly recommend installing sample data. To do this, go to the https://magento.com/tech-resources/download site and find the Sample Data - 1.x with version "1.9.2.4 and later". Download it.

Unpack the archive, for example, into home directory. After that, you need to import the data into the database. To do this, you must find the sql file into sample data folder and specify the full path to it in the import command.

mysql -u root -p magentotest < /home/username/magento-sample-data-1.9.2.4/magento_sample_data_for_1.9.2.4.sql

If the operation was successful, the data will be inserted in the database.

database

Now copy the sample data files to your site's folder.

public_html

Step 4. Download and set up Magento files

Finally, we are ready to install Magento. Go to the https://magento.com/tech-resources/download site, find the latest version of Magento.

Congratulations, now you got Magento on your local host!

Hope this tutorial was useful for you!

If you have any difficulties or questions concerning  Magento installing, you could always contact Webinse team.