I’m not sure whether version 1.4 is stable enough for a production site, it *seems* to be. But there are several modules and themes that don’t seem to be yet compatible with 1.4.
At any rate, I installed Magento yesterday, so I can’t do a real time step by step with pics. But, I’ll recall everything I did, to the best of my knowledge. I have Dreamhost as my host (shared server).
1) Pretty much as the instructions stated, I downloaded the full version, decompressed it, and then did the same with the sample data. So far, so good.
2) The firs little bit of technical hijinks., but not soul-crushing: I found the PHPMyAdmin interface in Dreamhosts offerings, and logged in. I uploaded the script that came with the sample data (the suffix gives it away with a .sql) and thankfully, did not get an error message. I fired up my FTP program and shot the sample data folder up to my server.
3) I FTP the full installation to the server, placing it in a subdirectory. I was concerned that the “media” folder that came with the sample data would get over-written by the full install. So I didn’t let Magento install into the same directory as the existing “media” folder. After Magento was fully uploaded, I took the contents of the first “media” folder (that came with the sample data) and pulled its contents into the media folder supplied by the installation. I then deleted the now empty media folder.
4) as per the instructions, I navigated to the install script with my browser and after a few questions that I didn’t really understand, it looked like I had more or less succeeded.
I am now considering installing another copy of Magento and using it as a scratch test server, only because I have lots of modules to install, and I am worried that if one screws with the other, even if I scrub some MySql tables and delete the respective directory, I might have altered the state somehow of my installation. So I’d prefer to keep one install that I only modify once I am sure it won’t break, and that way avoid tanking all the work done on the various modules.
At any rate, for those who have found this blog via google, my username on the Magento forums is Yippie2009.
Feel free to drop me a line. Since I am not an expert, I can only offer you an attempt to help you solve your problems if you have technical questions. I’d say the odds are even that you know more about this stuff than I do.