An OpenACS package extends your website and lets it do things it wasn't able to do before. You can have a weblog, a forums, a calendar, or even do sophisticated project-management via your website.

After you've installed OpenACS, you can congratulate yourself for a job well done. Then, you'll probably want to install a couple of packages.

To install packages, you have to be an administrator on the OpenACS webserver. Log in, and you'll see a link to Admin or the Control Panel. Click on that, then click on 'Install software'. Packages are sometimes also referred to as applications or software.

At this point, you'll need to determine whether or not you're able to install from the repository, or whether you should install from local files.

Basically, if you have a local CVS repository, or have custom code, you need to install from 'Local Files'. Otherwise, you can install from the OpenACS repository

If you want to install new packages, click on 'Install from Repository' or 'Install from Local'. Select the package, and click 'Install checked applications'. The system will check to make sure you have all necessary packages that the package you want depends on. If you're installing from Local Files, and you are missing any packages, you may have to add the packages your desired package depends on: the section called “Upgrading the OpenACS files”

If you run into any errors at all, check your /var/lib/aolserver/$OPENACS_SERVICE_NAME/log/error.log file, and post your error on the OpenACS forums

Once the package has been installed, then you will need to 'mount' the package. The next section handles that.