1. Goto: ( Administer > Site configuration > Clean URLs ) and ensure that Drupal's clean URLs are enabled and working correctly on your site.
2. Unzip and upload the module folder (as is) to the sites/all/modules folder in your Drupal installation directory.
3. Goto: ( Administer > Site building > Modules ) and enable the Boost module. You will find it in the section labeled "Caching".
4. Goto: ( Administer > Site configuration > Performance > Boost settings ) Specify the cache directory, which should be something like cache/normal/www.example.com (keeping the default directory is recommended) and must be writeable by the web server: you may need to create the directory, and set the permissions so it is writeable.
5. On the ( Administer > Site configuration > Performance > Boost settings ) page is the Default maximum cache lifetime setting. As cached pages are created, they are given an expire by date and time, which is the current date and time plus the maximum cache lifetime. These dates and times are checked on each cron run; and if a page is expired, the cache is cleared, and a new cached version will be created the next time the page is called upon by an anonymous user (including bots). The page will be regenerated by the Boost crawler if enabled on the Boost settings page.
6. IMPORTANT:
--- This step is easy and required for Boost to work! ---
Back up the original .htaccess file from your Drupal installation directory for safe keeping. Copy the custom generated htaccess rule from ( Administer > Site configuration > Performance > htaccess rules generation ) and paste the rules into the Drupal .htaccess file as shown below.
In the boost/htaccess/ folder, the default.txt file shows you the exact placement of the rules, in case your not sure.
The module package has 3 htaccess templates included in the Boost/htaccess folder (boosted1.txt, boosted2.txt and default.txt). These templates may be helpful in some cases and are good for reference. For the technically inclined, the difference between the two .htaccess templates is due to boosted1.txt relying on SERVER_NAME versus boosted2.txt using HTTP_HOST. There are valid use cases for both in more advanced multi-site installations.
7. Prepare robots.txt File for Search Engines
This is needed in order to prevent the output of this from accidently getting indexed by search engines. Locate and open the robots.txt file in the Drupal root with a text editor. Add Disallow: /boost_stats.php to the file as shown below. Save the change and put the file back in the Drupal root.
8. Goto: ( Administer > Site configuration > Performance ) Check and set the Drupal cache settings as desired.