Most of the previously well-hidden Kickstart fine-tuning parameters are now available in its starting page. However, a few more esoteric fine-tuning features are only available

Kickstart is a fine and fast solution on its own right, but people usually want to squirt every last drop of performance out of software. Kickstart offers some advanced tweaking options which might increase its performance or, conversely, sacrifice performance to better compatibility. Applying these tweaks requires editing the kickstart.php file. All the tweaking settings are set with "define" statements at the top of the file.

	Warning
	Changing these settings might cause the extraction process to fail, depending on your server's setup. You are strongly advised to test these settings in staging sites or running them with DRYRUN first.

The available settings are:

As stated in the first section of the Kickstart documentation, Kickstart is a very versatile utility whose primary objective is to extract archives directly on the server. It is not restricted to JoomlaPack backup archives; it just happens that this is the most common use. One of the most uncommon - yet, very convenient - uses is upgrading your Joomla! site every time the Joomla! team issues a new security or stability release.

The classic approach to Joomla! upgrade is to download the patch archive from JoomlaCode.org, extract it on your local PC, put the site off-line and upload all files through FTP. The problem lies with uploading. FTP is inherently slow, because a lot of overhead data has to be transferred back and forth the server for each file operation. These add a whooping 1 second (on average) for every file! Multiplying this with the number of files in the upgrade package tells us that most of the time we are FTP'ing files is spent in overhead.

Using Kickstart, you avoid this overhead because only two files are uploaded: kicktart.php itself and the upgrade patch ZIP archive. The extraction process takes place in the server, minimizing the amount of overhead and leading in faster upgrades. The procedure outlined below should be carried out with Kickstart 2.0.a1 or later. Remember to unzip Kickstart's ZIP package before uploading! You'll have to upload the kickstart.php file from this archive, not the archive itself!

First, you'll need the ZIP version of the Joomla! patch, which you can download from the Joomla! project's file repository site. Depending on which Joomla! version you've already installed, download the appropriate ZIP file. The tar.gz file will not do! For example, if you've got Joomla! 1.5.6 and want to update to 1.5.7 you must download the Joomla_1.5.6_to_1.5.7-Stable-Patch_Package.zip . Upload the Joomla! ZIP file and kickstart.php to your site's root. If you used FTP, make sure both files' permissions are 0777.

	Important
	Make sure you have a working backup of your site before you proceed! In the unlikely event you run into a problem we want to be sure you can roll back. There are many ways to take a backup of your site, but we obviously suggest you to use our open source JoomlaPack backup component.

Now visit the kickstart.php URL, which is something like http://www.example.com/kickstart.php , substituting www.example.com with the full URL to your Joomla! site. In the page presented to you, make sure the update ZIP is selected in the topmost combo box. For the operation method we suggest using the "JavaScript Redirects" method, unless you know what you're doing. Depending on your site configuration you can either use "Write directly to files" or "Use FTP", supplying your FTP connection information as well. Most users will need the second (FTP) option.

After you're done setting up Kickstart, hit the big green "Start" button. You will see your browser reloading the page many times; this is normal, it's how Kickstart works. On the final page, click the second link titled "here". As the page reads, you're (almost) done! If you had an .htaccess file on your site, it is now renamed to htaccess.bak. Using an FTP client, rename it back to .htaccess and you're really done, in - virtually - no more than a few seconds!

Try it! The first time I did it I managed to upgrade two sites in 3 minutes flat (including upload times!).

Having read so far, it is probably quite obvious to you that Kickstart can effortlessly deploy any kind of web application on your server, as long as it comes in ZIP format. The whole process is very easy and can be summarized in a couple of bullet-points:

Of course your web application might need some configuration files editing or you may have to access some web setup interface. However, the bulk of the installation process - uploading hundreds of files - has been already taken care for you.