We'll need a copy of CodeIgniter to start with. This book isn't really aimed at the beginner, so the chances are reasonably high that you already have a copy of CodeIgniter installed or at least know your way around enough to skip this part; however, it does make sense to briefly go through the installation of CodeIgniter so that we have something to talk about in later chapters!
First things first, go to https://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/installation/downloads.html. You'll see something similar to what is shown in the following screenshot. This is the CodeIgniter download page. At the time of writing, the current CodeIgniter version is 2.2.0; this is why the screenshot says Current version next to version 2.2.0; however, whichever version is the latest when you're reading this book is the version you want to use.
Click on the Current version link, and CodeIgniter will begin to download.
Once it's downloaded, navigate to where you have saved the file; this will be a compressed archive. Unpack it and move the contents of that file to a folder within your web root.
Specific details of routing, configuration, and database use are in each chapter (these details are specific to that particular chapter).
CodeIgniter on newer versions of PHP
You may experience errors if you run CodeIgniter on newer versions of PHP. There is a hack for this that is explained at https://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/244510/. A poster called milan.petrak has described a work around. It can be summed up as follows:
Open the /path/to/codeigniter/system/core/common.php file and find the line 257.
Find the following line:
$_config[0] =& $config;
with
return $_config[0];
return $_config[0] =& $config;
Save the common.php file.
This will likely be permanently fixed in later releases of CodeIgniter, but for now, this is the fix.