Overview

1. Check the requirements
2. Purchase Mint
3. Create a database
4. Create a user
5. Configure Mint
6. Install
7. Activate!
8. Tag your pages
9. Customize
10. Pimp your Mint with Pepper
11. Enjoy!

Check the requirements

Before you go falling in love with Mint, make sure your web host is running all of the software Mint requires (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP 4.2.3 and up).

Luckily, Shaun makes this easy by providing a Mint Server Compatibility Suite. Just download the suite, unzip and upload to the root of your server. Visit the suite with your browser and follow the instructions. It will tell you if you are missing any of the required features before you lay down your cash.

TextDrive passed this test with flying colors as of the date this entry was published. But, it is worth testing yourself just to be safe.

Purchase Mint

You're ready to take the plunge. Shuan makes the purchase process painless. Head over to haveamint.com, create an account, tell him the domain you want to license, and pay with PayPal or your credit card.

Don't worry, you can always change your licensed domain later.

You should get an activation key right away. Put it in a safe place. You'll need it during installation.

Create a database

Mint requires a MySQL database for storing its data. This can be an existing database, but I recommend creating a dedicated db to keep things clean.

(The instructions up to this point have been pretty generic and will apply no matter where your site is hosted. Now, I'm going to dive into configurations that are specific to TextDrive.)

Follow the instructions in this TextDrive knowledge base article to create a new database.

I recommend calling your database something like domain_mint (where domain is your web site domain).

Create a user

Now that your database is setup, you need to create a user name and password that will be used by Mint to access the database.

This TextDrive knowledge base article tells you how to create a new MySQL user.

A good user name might be something like mintdb.

The password you choose for this user will be stored in clear text in Mint's configuration file. So, pick a unique password that you don't use anywhere else.

Configure Mint

Now it's time to configure Mint.

Unzip the Mint distribution that you downloaded from your haveamint.com Account Center. Open /config/db.php in your text editor of choice. Set the appropriate values based on the database and user you just created.

'server'        => 'localhost',

'username'      => 'mintdb',

'password'      => 'secret',

'database'      => 'domain_mint',

'tblPrefix'     => 'mint_'

You are probably safe with the default values for server and tblPrefix. But if you have any problems, it might be time to talk to the TextDrive admins.

That's it! Configuration couldn't be much simpler.

Install

Upload the mint_vXXX directory (where XXX is the version number) to your domain's public web root and rename the directory mint.

Activate!

Visit your new Mint installation in a web browser. (eg. http://www.yourdomain.com/mint/)

Follow the instructions to activate your Mint installation. You will need the activation code that was emailed to you earlier. You can also get it from your Account Center on haveamint.com.

Tag your pages

In order for Mint to see what's happening on your site, you need to add a snippet of code to every page.

This should be easy if you're using a content management system like MovableType, TextPattern, WordPress, Blogger, etc. Just add the following code to your template, so it appears before </head> on each page.

<script src="/mint/?js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Specific instructions for a number of content management systems can be found in Mint's Troubleshooting Forum.

Customize

Now is a good time to customize Mint by setting your timezone, rearranging the panes in the UI, etc. You can find all of these options (and more!) behind Mint's "preferences" link.

I recommend checking the option to "Ignore my visits (uses cookies)." This tells Mint to leave out your visits when calculating stats for your site.

Pimp your Mint with Pepper

Once you get comfortable with what Mint can do out of the box, you might choose to extend it with a Pepper.

Pepper is Mint's API that allows any Joe-on-the-Internet to create their own extensions for Mint.

There are a number of Peppers out there. You can start with some of Shaun's official Peppers (found in your Account Center) and graduate to 3rd party Peppers if you see something you like.

Here are a peck of popular Peppers:

• Outclicks: Find out where people go when they leave your site.
• Sparks: Small graphs (aka sparklines) show you activity trends over time.
• Referrer Rollup: Find out what sites refer the most visitors to you.

The Peppermint Tea blog has a great collection of Mint plugins if you're craving even more.

Enjoy!

Now that you're up and running, try not to get addicted to checking your stats every five minutes.

Let me know in the comments how long it took you and if you ran into any problems.

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