osTicket is one of the best open source ticketing softwares I have encountered. Here are 9 points that may help you while and after installing osTicket. I am not going to 
repeat what is already present in installation guide but want to compliment it with my findings.
- Download is available as a .tar.gz extension. Use unzipping softwares like 7zip to first uncompress .gz and then .tar. Finally you will get a folder like osticket_1.9.0 (or osticket_x.y.z in general)
- You only need to upload the contents of upload folder inside osticket_1.9.0, do NOT upload the upload folder itself to your webserver. (Here I am assuming you have uploaded the contents inside support folder. This will be needed in the next steps)
- After uploading the files above, go to yourdomain.com/support/include and rename the file ost-config.sample.php to ost-config.php. Make sure you chmod it to 777.
- Now create a mysql database inside your webhost control panel. Note the database name, hostname, username, password. These will be needed in next step.
- Now you are ready to use the web installation script which can be located at http://www.yourdomain.com/support/setup/
- Once done with installation, make sure to chmod ost-config.php back to 644 and delete the setup directory.
- You can go to http://www.yourdomain.com/support/scp/admin.php?t=settings to modify settings. In case you wish to enable attachments for users, click on attachments tab and check various boxes acc. to your requirement. By default the maximum size allowed for an attachment was 1 MB which I found to be quite restrictive so I choose to increase it to 10 MB (10485760 bytes) Similarly I have included .doc, .pdf, .docx, .zip, .jpg, .png, .gif, .bmp, .txt as accepted file formats.
- Attachments folder option is a bit tricky one. You need to give the complete path of the folder where you wish to send the attachments. So I suggest you to create a new folder under support folder called attachments. Now you can either ask your webhost to provide you a complete path to the folder you created above OR create a fie called test.php inside the support folder and paste this code inside it
<?php echo $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];?>
Now run http://www.yourdomain.com/support/test.php and you will see the complete path to the folder.
- When you go to create a new ticket, you will see an additional field for phone number. in case you wish to remove the phone number field follow directions here
Bonus Points –
- In case you use Google Apps for domains and want to set that for incoming emails with OSTicket, use this link (Remember you can’t use Email Piping feature with Google Apps you have to go for Pop Access and enable cron on your webhost)
- In case you get errors in osTicket when an already logged-in user tries to submit a ticket, follow the 2nd point on this post.
- In case you get a 403 forbidden error while using a redirect link from your support site , say http://www.yoursite.com/support/l.php?url=http://www.anothersite.com&auth= , ask your webhost to whitelist a mod_security rule.
Ankur Jain is a Software Engineer in Test Automation. After a 5 years stint with Accenture and Oracle, he started his eLearning company. A long-time blogger and proud owner of the "Learn" series of websites. 
Hi. Would you be able to give me some feedback on scalability of osticket, especially when on a shared hosting ? I would like to use this as a query management system with about 15 odd users answering queries, and the volume of incoming mail queries is quite high – something like 300-400 mails daily. Not sure if the shared hosting environment on which our site is hosted would support this. Any inputs would be most welcome. Thanks in advance.
@Rajiv: osTicket is one fine piece of software. There are lots of variables involved when it comes to shared hosting, however if it is a decent enough host, managing 300-400 mails should not be a problem at all.
@ Ankur – Thanks so much for your inputs, Ankur. Highly appreciated !
please help i cannot get attachments to work am stuck 🙁
thanks alot.It really helped me. superb 🙂
Thanks! Point 8 very usefull! the test.php was blocked or failed on my hostgator, but I was able to see the full path on the file editor.
Great post. I was stuggling with the attachment directory. You saved me the trouble. Thanks again!
it helped.Nicely put up.
No one seems to know how to fix this design flaw in osTicket. Perhaps you have some ideas?
The autoresponse emails are not word wrapping correctly. The lines break in the middle of words or urls. An example:
Our customer care team has created a ticket, #981546 on your behalf, with t
he following message.
The Votive Chapels are not displaying the lit candles.
If you wish to provide additional comments or information regarding this is
sue, please don’t open a new ticket. You can update or view this ticket’s p
rogress online here: http://www.saint-mike.org/xxxxx/support/view.php?e=e
[email protected]&t=981546.
is it possible to run osticket for my local lan netowork and not online.
how can i install , pls help
@kg: Not sure. Check with OsTicket support folks
If you’re running Linux, I may be able to help…
Basically you’ll do a little firewall work, easy not hard… this is just one of the ways, the easiest 🙂
Yes, you can host osticket in your local lan network if you have any webserver,php and mysql server installation. You can use xampp if needed if you are using windows OS.
Great post, it saved us some headache while trying to do a fresh install of OS Ticket this morning.
I had trouble deleting the setup directory. I was able to delete the whole contents of the directory but not the directory itself. I *fixed* the issue by renaming the directory to something useless that I’ll never use.
Thanks Michael. Good to know it helped you!
Windows??