PageMotor Setup Guide

Installing PageMotor on HostGator

A plain-English walkthrough. About ten minutes, and you do not need to be technical.

⏱ ~10 minutes 🧰 No coding 🖥 Works on any cPanel host

Before you start, have these ready: a HostGator web hosting account (their standard hosting plans all include cPanel; their separate Website Builder product does not, and PageMotor cannot run there), the PageMotor files (the .zip you downloaded), and the name of your website. That is everything.

Not on HostGator? Everything in this guide is standard cPanel, so the steps are the same on any cPanel host. The screens may be laid out a little differently, but the names you need, like File Manager and MySQL Databases, are the same. We also have this guide for Bluehost and GoDaddy, and a different one for SiteGround (which does not use cPanel).

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1Put PageMotor on your site

Open cPanel: log in at portal.hostgator.com, choose Hosting in the menu, and click the cPanel button under Quick Links. (A shortcut that always works: go to yourdomain.com/cpanel and log in with the cPanel details from your HostGator welcome email.)
In cPanel, click File Manager and open the folder for your site. It is usually public_html. (Installing on a second, addon domain? Use that domain's own folder instead; cPanel shows it under Domains.)
Click Upload, choose your PageMotor .zip, and wait for it to finish. (File Manager takes files up to 500 MB, far larger than the PageMotor zip.)
Back in File Manager, right-click the uploaded zip and choose Extract.

cPanel Tools page showing the Files and Databases sections — cPanel’s Tools page. File Manager is under Files; MySQL® Databases is under Databases. Captured on GoDaddy’s cPanel — apart from your host’s logo and colours, these screens are identical on HostGator.

cPanel File Manager with public_html open, ready for upload — Navigate to public_html in File Manager, then click Upload to add your PageMotor .zip file.

When it is done you should see pagemotor.php, a lib folder, and a file called config-sample.php sitting in your site folder. (If extracting gave you a single folder called pagemotor instead, open it, select everything inside, choose Move and move it all into your site folder, then delete the empty folder and the zip.) Good. We use that sample file in step 3.

2Create your database

PageMotor keeps your content in a database. Make one in three quick stages.

In cPanel, open MySQL Databases (under the Databases section).
Under Create New Database, type a name like pagemotor and click Create Database.
Scroll to MySQL Users → Add New User. Pick a username, let the password generator make a strong password, and click Create User. Write the password down now.
Scroll to Add User To Database. Choose your new user and your new database, click Add, then tick ALL PRIVILEGES and Make Changes.

cPanel MySQL Databases page with the Create New Database form — The MySQL® Databases page. Create the database here, then scroll down for Add New User and Add User To Database. (This capture is from GoDaddy, which shows no prefix box — on HostGator you will see your `theaccount_` prefix in front of the name field.)

The one thing nearly everyone misses: cPanel adds your account name to the front of these, on HostGator and nearly every other cPanel host. A database you typed as pagemotor is saved as something like theaccount_pagemotor, and the user the same way. Copy the full names exactly as cPanel shows them. You will need three things in the next step: the database name, the username, and the password.

3Fill in config.php

This is the file that connects PageMotor to the database you just made.

In File Manager, find config-sample.php next to pagemotor.php.
Right-click it and choose Rename. Rename it to exactly config.php. This rename is the step that switches PageMotor on.
Right-click config.php and choose Edit.
Put your three values into DB_NAME, DB_USER and DB_PASSWORD, using the full prefixed names from step 2. Leave the rest as they are, then Save.

Here is what the database section of your config.php should look like once filled in. Edit the existing lines to match; you are changing three values, not pasting this block in:

// Database connection info:
define('DB_NAME', 'theaccount_pagemotor');   // exact name from cPanel
define('DB_USER', 'theaccount_pmuser');      // exact username from cPanel
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'your-strong-password');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');            // correct for HostGator and most cPanel hosts
define('DB_CHARSET', '');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');
define('DB_TABLE_PREFIX', 'pm_');
define('DB_FLAGS', '');
define('PM_HTML_CHARSET', '');

Two things to double-check: the file must be named exactly config.php (not config-sample.php, and not config.php.txt), and it must sit in the same folder as pagemotor.php.

4Finish in your browser

Visit your website. On this first visit PageMotor quietly sets up its content for you.
Now go to yoursite.com/admin/ and create your admin user.

That is it. You are in, and you can start building pages.

If something is not working

Open these only if you hit them. Each one is quick.

I see "HTTP ERROR 500" or a blank white page

most commonAlmost always a config.php problem. Check three things:

The file is named exactly config.php (not still config-sample.php, and not config.php.txt).
It is in the same folder as pagemotor.php.
To see the real reason, open cPanel → Metrics → Errors, or the error_log file in your site folder. (HostGator's Customer Portal also shows errors without opening cPanel: Websites → Settings → Advanced → Logs.) If it says config.php "No such file or directory", this is your fix.

The log says "MySQLi Connection Error"

Good news, that means config.php is now working and PageMotor reached the database step. It just could not log in. Re-check, against the exact names cPanel shows:

The database name and username include your account prefix (the theaccount_ part).
The password is correct.
The user was added to the database with ALL PRIVILEGES (step 2, last part).
Rarely, a host keeps databases on a separate server, so DB_HOST is not localhost. If the three values above are definitely right, check your host's database details page or welcome email, or ask their support, for the correct host name.

I changed my PHP version and nothing changed

The PHP version is rarely the cause. A missing or misnamed config.php fails the same way on every version, so changing it makes no difference. Sort the config.php first. PageMotor is happy on modern PHP 8.x. One HostGator note: older accounts can still default to PHP 7.4, so once the install works, check cPanel → Software → MultiPHP Manager and pick a PHP 8 version if you are not on one.

I cannot find config-sample.php

It ships inside the PageMotor download, right next to pagemotor.php. Two things to check: the files may have landed in a pagemotor subfolder when the zip extracted, in which case move everything in it up into your site folder (see the note in step 1); and if the folder is genuinely empty, the zip did not extract completely, so repeat step 1.

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