Requirements

Vanilla Forum recommended software stack:

• PHP version 7.2 or greater with the following extensions:
• mbstring
• curl
• gd
• PDO
• mysqli
• openssl
• MySQL version 5.7 or greater, or MariaDB equivalent. This guide will use MariaDB
• Web server software such as Nginx or Apache. This guide will use Nginx
• SSL encryption is optional but recommended

Before you begin

Check the FreeBSD version.

uname -ro
# FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE

Ensure that your FreeBSD system is up to date.

freebsd-update fetch install
pkg update && pkg upgrade -y

Install some basic system administration packages if they are not present on your system.

pkg install -y sudo vim unzip wget curl bash socat git unzip

Create a new user account with your preferred username (we will use johndoe).

adduser

# Username: johndoe
# Full name: John Doe
# Uid (Leave empty for default): <Enter>
# Login group [johndoe]: <Enter>
# Login group is johndoe. Invite johndoe into other groups? []: wheel
# Login class [default]: <Enter>
# Shell (sh csh tcsh nologin) [sh]: bash
# Home directory [/home/johndoe]: <Enter>
# Home directory permissions (Leave empty for default): <Enter>
# Use password-based authentication? [yes]: <Enter>
# Use an empty password? (yes/no) [no]: <Enter>
# Use a random password? (yes/no) [no]: <Enter>
# Enter password: your_secure_password
# Enter password again: your_secure_password
# Lock out the account after creation? [no]: <Enter>
# OK? (yes/no): yes
# Add another user? (yes/no): no
# Goodbye!

Run the visudo command and uncomment the %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL line to allow members of the wheel group to execute any command.

visudo

# Uncomment by removing hash (#) sign
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Now, switch to your newly created user with su command.

su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

sudo tzsetup

Install PHP

Install PHP and PHP extensions.

sudo pkg install -y php72 php72-mbstring php72-curl php72-gd php72-pdo php72-mysqli php72-pdo_mysql php72-json php72-openssl php72-ctype php72-dom php72-hash php72-iconv php72-tokenizer php72-calendar php72-fileinfo php72-session php72-simplexml php72-xml php72-filter

Check the version.

php --version
# PHP 7.2.14 (cli) (built: Jan 15 2019 01:14:39) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies

Soft-link php.ini-production to php.ini.

sudo ln -s /usr/local/etc/php.ini-production /usr/local/etc/php.ini

Check installed PHP extensions.

php -m
# mbstring
# curl
# gd
# PDO
# mysqli
# openssl
# . . .

Enable and start PHP-FPM.

sudo sysrc php_fpm_enable=yes
sudo service php-fpm start

Install MariaDB

Install MariaDB.

sudo pkg install -y mariadb102-client mariadb102-server

Check the version.

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.19-MariaDB, for FreeBSD12.0 (amd64) using readline 5.1

Start and enable MariaDB.

sudo sysrc mysql_enable="yes" 
sudo service mysql-server start

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log into MariaDB as the root user.

mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create a new database and user. Remember the credentials for this new user.

CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;

Install Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo pkg install -y nginx

Check the version.

nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.14.2

Enable and start Nginx.

sudo sysrc nginx_enable=yes
sudo service nginx start

Configure Nginx for use with Vanilla forum.

sudo vim /usr/local/etc/nginx/vanilla.conf

Populate the file with the following.

server {

  listen 80;
  server_name example.com;
  root /usr/local/www/vanilla;
  index index.php;

  location ~* /\.git { deny all; return 403; }
  location /build/ { deny all; return 403; }
  location /cache/ { deny all; return 403; }
  location /cgi-bin/ { deny all; return 403; }
  location /uploads/import/ { deny all; return 403; }
  location /conf/ { deny all; return 403; }
  location /tests/ { deny all; return 403; }
  location /vendor/ { deny all; return 403; }

  location ~* ^/index\.php(/|$) {
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    try_files $fastcgi_script_name =404;
    set $path_info $fastcgi_path_info;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $path_info;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME /index.php;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root/index.php;
    fastcgi_param X_REWRITE 1;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
  }

  location ~* \.php(/|$) {
    rewrite ^ /index.php$uri last;
  }
  
  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ @vanilla;
  }

  location @vanilla {
    rewrite ^ /index.php$uri last;
  }

}

Save the file and exit with COLON+W+Q.

Now we need to include the vanilla.conf file in the main nginx.conf file.

Run sudo vim /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf and add the following line to the http {} block.

include vanilla.conf;

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo service nginx reload

Install Vanilla forum

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/www/vanilla

Change ownership of the /usr/local/www/vanilla directory to johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /usr/local/www/vanilla

Navigate to the document root directory.

cd /usr/local/www/vanilla

Download the latest Vanilla forum.

wget https://open.vanillaforums.com/get/vanilla-core-2.6.4.zip

Unzip it and remove the zip archive.

unzip vanilla-core-2.6.4.zip
rm vanilla-core-2.6.4.zip

Change ownership of the /usr/local/www/vanilla directory to www.

sudo chown -R www:www /usr/local/www/vanilla

Restart PHP-FPM.

sudo service php-fpm restart

Navigate to the folder where you uploaded Vanilla in your web browser and follow the instructions on the screen to complete the setup.

Requirements

• Git
• PHP version 5.5.9 or greater
• HTTP server with PHP support. This guide will use Nginx.
• A supported database: MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite. This guide will use MariaDB.
• Composer

Before you begin

Check the CentOS version.

cat /etc/centos-release
# CentOS Linux release 7.5.1804 (Core)

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

useradd -c "John Doe" johndoe && passwd johndoe
usermod -aG wheel johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo yum update -y

Install necessary packages.

sudo yum install -y wget curl vim git

For simplicity, disable SELinux and Firewall.

sudo setenforce 0
sudo systemctl stop firewalld
sudo systemctl disable firewalld

Install PHP and required PHP extensions

Setup the Webtatic YUM repo.

sudo rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

Install PHP and required PHP extensions.

sudo yum install -y php70w php70w-cli php70w-fpm php70w-common php70w-xml php70w-gd php70w-zip php70w-mbstring php70w-mysql php70w-pgsql php70w-sqlite3 php70w-mcrypt php70w-apc

Check the version.

php --version
# PHP 7.0.30 (cli) (built: Apr 28 2018 08:14:08) ( NTS )

Start and enable PHP-FPM.

sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Install MariaDB and create a database

Setup the MariDB repo. Run sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo and populate it with the following.

[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = https://yum.mariadb.org/10.2/centos7-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1

Install MariaDB database server.

sudo yum install -y MariaDB-server MariaDB-client

Check the version.

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.16-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using readline 5.1

Start and enable MariaDB.

sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

Run mysql_secure_installation to improve security and set the password for the MariaDB root user.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Connect to the MariaDB shell as the root user.

mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create an empty MariaDB database and user for Cachet, and remember the credentials.

CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT

Install and configure Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the version.

nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.12.2

Start and enable Nginx.

sudo systemctl start nginx.service
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

Configure Nginx. Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/cachet.conf and populate the file with the following configuration.

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;

  server_name status.example.com; # Check this
  root /var/www/cachet/public; # Check this

  index index.php;

  location / {
    try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$args;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # Check this
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_keep_conn on;
  }
}

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install Composer

Install Composer globally.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '544e09ee996cdf60ece3804abc52599c22b1f40f4323403c44d44fdfdd586475ca9813a858088ffbc1f233e9b180f061') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Check the version.

composer --version
# Composer version 1.6.5 2018-05-04 11:44:59

Install Cachet

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/cachet

Change ownership of the /var/www/cachet directory to johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /var/www/cachet

Download the Cachet source code with Git and checkout the latest tagged release.

cd /var/www/cachet
git clone https://github.com/cachethq/Cachet.git .
git tag -l
git checkout v2.3.15

Copy .env.example to .env file and configure the database and APP_URL settings in .env.

cp .env.example .env
vim .env

Install dependencies with composer.

composer install --no-dev -o

Set the application key.

php artisan key:generate

Install Cachet.

php artisan app:install

Change ownership of the /var/www/cachet directory to nginx.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/cachet

Run sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and set the user and group to nginx. Initially, it will be set to apache.

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
# user = nginx
# group = nginx

Restart PHP-FPM.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Open your site in a web browser and follow the instructions on the screen to finish Cachet installation. To access the Cachet dashboard append /dashboard to your website URL.

Requirements

Before you can install PyroCMS on a server, there are a few requirements that need to be met.

• 1GB of RAM
• LEMP/LAMP stack
• PHP >= 7.0
• PDO PHP Extension
• cURL PHP Extension
• SQLite PHP Extension
• OpenSSL PHP Extension
• Mbstring PHP Extension
• Fileinfo PHP Extension
• Tokenizer PHP Extension
• GD Library (>=2.0) OR Imagick PHP extension (>=6.5.7)

Check the CentOS version.

cat /etc/centos-release
# CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708 (Core)

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

useradd -c "John Doe" johndoe && passwd johndoe
usermod -aG wheel johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo yum update -y

Install required and useful packages.

sudo yum install -y wget vim unzip bash-completion

Disable SELinux.

sudo setenforce 0

Install PHP and required extensions

CentOS does not provide the latest PHP version in its default software repositories. We’ll need to add a Webtatic YUM repo.

Download and install PHP 7.2 and required PHP extensions.

sudo yum install -y php72w php72w-cli php72w-fpm php72w-mysql php72w-curl php72w-sqlite3 php72w-mbstring php72w-gd php72w-dom

Check PHP version.

php --version
PHP 7.2.2 (cli) (built: Feb  4 2018 10:14:07) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies

Install MySQL/MariaDB and create a database

Download and install MariaDB.

sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo

# Copy/paste this to the /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo file

[mariadb]

name = MariaDB baseurl = https://yum.mariadb.org/10.2/centos7-amd64 gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB gpgcheck=1 sudo yum install -y MariaDB-server MariaDB-client

Check the MariaDB version.

mysql --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.13-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using readline 5.1

Start and enable MariaDB.

sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
sudo systemctl start mariadb.service

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your MariaDB installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log into MariaDB as the root user.

mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create a new MariaDB database and user, and remember the credentials.

create database dbname;
grant all on dbname.* to 'username' identified by 'password';

Exit MySQL.

exit

Install and configure NGINX

Install NGINX.

sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx_mainline.repo

# Copy/paste this to the /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx_mainline.repo file

[nginx]

name=nginx repo baseurl=https://nginx.org/packages/mainline/centos/7/$basearch/ gpgcheck=1 enabled=1 wget https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key sudo rpm –import nginx_signing.key rm nginx_signing.key sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the NGINX version.

nginx -v

Start and enable NGINX.

sudo systemctl enable nginx.service
sudo systemctl start nginx.service

Configure NGINX as a FastCGI proxy. Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/pyro.conf and populate it with the following text.

server {
  listen 80;

  server_name example.com; # Check this
  root /var/www/pyro/public; # Check this
  
  index index.php index.html;
  charset utf-8;
  
  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # Check this
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include fastcgi_params;
  }
}

NOTE: Make sure to point the web root to Pyro’s public directory.

Test the NGINX configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload NGINX.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Download and install Composer

Download the Composer dependencies.

sudo yum install -y curl git unzip

Download and install Composer, the dependency manager for PHP.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '544e09ee996cdf60ece3804abc52599c22b1f40f4323403c44d44fdfdd586475ca9813a858088ffbc1f233e9b180f061') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Check the Composer version.

composer --version
# Composer version 1.6.3 2018-01-31 16:28:17

Download and install PyroCMS via Composer

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/pyro

Change the ownership of the /var/www/pyro  directory to johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /var/www/pyro

Download the latest stable release of PyroCMS from the command line.

cd /var/www/pyro
composer create-project pyrocms/pyrocms .

NOTE: You may run out of memory when installing Pyro via Composer. It may be wise to stop Nginx, PHP-FPM and MySQL servers with sudo systemctl stop nginx.service php-fpm.service mysql.service to save on memory usage and start them again after this step.

Change the ownership of the /var/www/pyro directory to nginx.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/pyro

Run sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and set the user and group to nginx.

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
# user = nginx
# group = nginx

Restart the php-fpm.service.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Using your preferred web browser, open your site and follow the PyroCMS installer. After following the installer you will have PyroCMS up and running. To access the PyroCMS admin area, append /admin to your site URL.

This guide was written for Vanilla Forums 2.3, but may also work on newer releases.

Prerequisites

• A AKLWEB HOST CentOS 7 server instance.
• A sudo user.

For this tutorial, we will use forum.example.com as the domain name pointed towards the AKLWEB HOST instance. Please make sure to replace all occurrences of the example domain name with the actual one.

Install Apache

Install Apache.

sudo yum -y install httpd

Start Apache and enable it to automatically run at boot time.

sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd

Install PHP 7.1

We will use PHP 7.1 to obtain maximum security and stability. First, add and enable the Remi repository.

sudo rpm -Uvh http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
sudo yum -y install yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php71

Install the latest version of PHP along with the modules required by Vanilla Forum.

sudo yum -y install php php-gd php-mysqli php-mbstring php-curl php-cli php-pear php-devel php-openssl

Install MariaDB

MariaDB is a fork of MySQL. Add the MariaDB repository into your system. The default YUM repository contains an older version of MariaDB, which is unsupported by Vanilla.

echo "[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.2/centos7-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1" | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/mariadb.repo

Install MariaDB.

sudo yum -y install mariadb mariadb-server

Start MariaDB and enable it to automatically start at boot time.

sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable mariadb

Before configuring the database, you will need to secure MariaDB first.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

You will be asked for the current MariaDB root password. By default, there is no root password in a fresh MariaDB installation. Press the “Enter” key to proceed. Set a strong password for the root user of your MariaDB server and answer “Y” to all of the other questions that are asked. The questions asked are self-explanatory.

Log into the MySQL shell as root.

mysql -u root -p

Provide the password for the MariaDB root user to log in.

Run the following queries to create a database and a database user for the Vanilla installation.

CREATE DATABASE vanilla_data CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
CREATE USER 'vanilla_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON vanilla_data.* TO 'vanilla_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

You can replace the database name vanilla_data and username vanilla_user according to your choice. Please make sure to change StrongPassword to a very strong password.

Install Vanilla forum

Download the Vanilla forum zip archive.

wget https://open.vanillaforums.com/get/vanilla-core.zip

Install unzip.

sudo yum -y install unzip

Extract the archive.

sudo unzip vanilla-core.zip -d /var/www/vanilla

Provide the appropriate ownership.

sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/vanilla

Allow HTTP traffic on port 80 through the firewall.

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Create virtual host

Create a virtual host for your Vanilla forum site.

sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/forum.example.com.conf

Populate the file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName forum.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/vanilla
    <Directory /var/www/vanilla>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Restart Apache.

sudo systemctl restart httpd

Wrapping Up

Now that you have successfully installed and configured Vanilla forum, you can access the application on http://forum.example.com. Provide the database and administrator details. Once you have provided the required database and admin details, the setup will write into the database and you will be taken to the administration interface. You can now configure the forum according to your needs.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Vanilla forum in CentOS 7 server.

Prerequisites

• A AKLWEB HOST CentOS 7 server instance.
• A sudo user.

In this tutorial, we will use crm.example.com as the domain name pointed to the server. Replace all occurrences of crm.example.com with your actual domain name.

Install Nginx and PHP 7

OroCRM can be installed on any production web server supporting PHP. OroCRM supports all versions of PHP greater than 7.0. In this tutorial, we will use Nginx with PHP-FPM and PHP 7.1.

Install Nginx.

sudo yum -y install nginx

Start Nginx and enable it to automatically start at boot.

sudo systemctl start nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

PHP 7 is not available in the default YUM repository, but we can use the Remi repository to obtain and install the latest builds of PHP 7. First, add and enable the Remi repository.

sudo rpm -Uvh http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
sudo yum -y install yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php71

Install the latest version of PHP 7 along with the PHP modules required by OroCRM.

sudo yum -y install php php-fpm php-ctype php-curl php-fileinfo php-gd php-intl php-json php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-mysql php-pcre php-simplexml php-tokenizer php-xml php-zip php-tidy php-soap php-opcache php-posix

Edit the default PHP configuration file.

sudo nano /etc/php.ini

Find the following lines. Uncomment and make changes as shown.

date.timezone = Asia/Kolkata
;Replace "Asia/Kolkata" with your appropriate timezone
    
memory_limit = 512M
cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

Edit the PHP-FPM configuration file.

sudo nano /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

By default, PHP-FPM is configured to run with Apache and to listen to the port 9000. We will need to change the user and group, as well as the Unix socket file on which it will run. Find the following lines and make necessary changes as shown.

user = nginx
group = nginx

;listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
;Comment out or remove the above line and add the following line.
listen = /var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock

listen.owner = nobody
listen.group = nobody

Start PHP-FPM and enable it to start at boot.

sudo systemctl start php-fpm
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm

Provide ownership of PHP-FPM socket file to Nginx user.

sudo chown nginx:nginx /var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock

Install MariaDB

MariaDB is an open source fork of MySQL. Install MariaDB.

sudo yum -y install mariadb mariadb-server

Start MariaDB and enable it to automatically start at boot.

sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable mariadb

The default installation of MariaDB comes with a few test databases and anonymous users. Before configuring the database, you will need to secure the MariaDB server first. You can secure it by running the mysql_secure_installation script.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

You will be asked for the current MariaDB root password. By default, there is no root password in a fresh MariaDB installation. Press the Enter key to proceed. Set a strong password for the root user of your MariaDB server and answer Y to all the other questions asked. The questions asked are self-explanatory.

Create the Database for OroCRM

Log in to the MySQL shell as the root user by running.

mysql -u root -p

Provide the password for the MariaDB root user to log in.

Run the following queries to create a database and a database user for OroCRM installation.

CREATE DATABASE oro_data;
CREATE USER 'oro_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON oro_data.* TO 'oro_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

You can replace the database name oro_data and username oro_user according to your choice. Be sure to change StrongPassword to a very strong password.

Install Node.js and Composer

OroCRM also requires Node.js JavaScript runtime. Node.js will be used by OroCRM to compile the JavaScript, which is used to build the user interface of the application. The default repository of CentOS contains an outdated version of Node.js, thus you will need to add the Nodesource repository to your system to obtain the latest version.

sudo curl --silent --location https://rpm.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo bash -

Install Node.js and Git.

sudo yum -y install nodejs git

Git will be used to clone the OroCRM repository from the internet. You will also need to install Composer. Composer is a dependency manager tool for PHP applications. Because OroCRM is written in Symfony framework, you will need Composer to install the dependencies and application.

Install Composer.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

Move Composer to the /usr/bin directory so that it can be executed from anywhere in the system.

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/bin/composer

Provide execution permission to the Composer.

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/composer

Install OroCRM

There are many ways to download OroCRM on your server. The most appropriate way to get the most updated version is to clone the repository through Git.

Clone the OroCRM repository.

cd /usr/share/nginx/
sudo git clone -b 2.3 https://github.com/oroinc/crm-application.git orocrm

Copy the example parameters file to the default parameters file used by OroCRM.

cd orocrm
sudo cp app/config/parameters.yml.dist  app/config/parameters.yml

Before you can proceed further, you will need to update the parameters.yml file to provide database and email information.

sudo nano app/config/parameters.yml

Find the following lines.

database_driver:   pdo_mysql
database_host:     127.0.0.1
database_port:     ~
database_name:     oro_crm
database_user:     root
database_password: ~

Update the above configuration according to the database you have created to store OroCRM data. In our case, it should look like this.

database_driver:   pdo_mysql
database_host:     127.0.0.1
database_port:     3306
database_name:     oro_data
database_user:     oro_user
database_password: StrongPassword

If you have an SMTP server ready and you wish to use email sending features immediately, you can update the mailer settings as shown.

mailer_transport:  smtp
mailer_host:       mail.example.com
mailer_port:       456
mailer_encryption: ssl
mailer_user:       mails@example.com
mailer_password:   EMailPassword

If you do not have a mail server ready, you can skip it for now by leaving the existing values. You can always change email configuration through the dashboard.

Set a random string in secret by replacing ThisTokenIsNotSoSecretChangeIt. A random string is required to encode the session data. An example string will look like this.

secret: uxvpXHhDxCFc9yU1hV1fMwjSoyVUzGh4WBMBBBa3XEgrRUF5OuB2h8iNl9JRDqcd

You can generate a random string using the pwgen utility. Install pwgen utility by running sudo yum -y install pwgen. To generate a random string, run pwgen -s 64 1.

Save the file and exit from the editor. Install the required PHP dependencies through composer.

sudo composer install --prefer-dist --no-dev

Using --no-dev will ensure that the Composer only installs the dependencies required to run the web server in production mode. The script will take a few minutes to download and install the required PHP dependencies.

Install the application.

sudo php app/console oro:install --env=prod

This will build the web cache and write the database. The --env=prod parameter is provided to install the application in production mode. The installation will only proceed if all the required dependencies are installed and configured.

During the installation, you will be asked few questions for setting up the administrator account. The questions are as follows.

Administration setup.
Application URL (http://localhost): http://crm.example.com
Organization name (OroCRM): My Organization
Username (admin):
Email: mail@example.com
First name: John
Last name: Doe
Password:
Load sample data (y/n): y

Provide the information. Load the sample data to evaluate the product before using it for production.

Warm up the API documentation cache:

sudo php app/console oro:api:doc:cache:clear

Configuring Nginx, Firewall and Permissions

Create an Nginx server block file to serve the application to the users.

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/orocrm.conf

Populate the file.

server {
    server_name crm.example.com;
    root  /usr/share/nginx/orocrm/web;

    location / {
        # try to serve file directly, fallback to app.php
        try_files $uri /app.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/(app|app_dev|config|install)\.php(/|$) {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param HTTPS off;
    }

    # Enable Gzip compression
    gzip on;
    gzip_buffers 16 8k;
    gzip_comp_level 5;
    gzip_disable "msie6";
    gzip_min_length 1000;
    gzip_http_version 1.0;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_types text/plain application/javascript application/x-javascript text/javascript text/xml text/css image/svg+xml;
    gzip_vary on;    

    # Enable browser caching
    # One week for javascript and css
     location ~* \.(?:css|js) {
       expires 1w;
       access_log off;
       add_header Cache-Control public;
     }

     # Three weeks for media: images, fonts, icons, video, audio etc.
     location ~* \.(?:jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|tiff|woff|eot|ttf|svg|svgz|mp4|ogg|ogv|webm|swf|flv)$ {
       expires 3w;
       access_log off;
       add_header Cache-Control public;
     }

    error_log /var/log/nginx/orocrm_error.log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/orocrm_access.log;
}

Make sure that you change the crm.example.com with your actual domain name. The above configuration also includes the configuration required for GZip compression and browser caching. Gzip compression compresses the data before sending it to the browser. Enabling browser caching stores the static resources to the web cache of the client computer. The next time the user accesses the site, most of the static content is loaded from the user’s own web cache. These two methods increase the speed of the application dramatically.

Check the Nginx configuration file for any errors.

sudo nginx -t

The output should look like the following.

[user@aklwebhost ~]$ sudo nginx -t
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Provide the ownership of the OrOCRM files to the Nginx user.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /usr/share/nginx/orocrm

Restart Nginx to apply the new configuration.

sudo systemctl restart nginx

If you are running a firewall on your server, you will need to configure the firewall to set an exception for HTTP service. Allow Nginx to connect from outside the network.

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

You can now access the application at http://crm.example.com. Log in using the administrator username and password you have set during installation.

Setup Scheduled Tasks and Background Jobs

To automatically run the scheduled tasks you can add a Cron job entry. Open crontab.

sudo crontab -e

Add the following line to the file.

*/1 * * * * /usr/bin/php /usr/share/nginx/orocrm/app/console oro:cron --env=prod > /dev/null

This will run the cron job every minute so that the scheduled tasks such as email queues are processed earliest.

You will also need to setup Supervisor to run the Message Queue service. It is required that at least one process is running at all times for a consumer to process the messages. A consumer can normally interrupt the message process through many ways. To ensure that the service is running continuously, we will use the Supervisor service. We will configure Supervisor to run four processes in parallel. If any of the four processes is stopped for any reason, the Supervisor will try to start it again.

Install Supervisor.

sudo yum -y install supervisor

Edit the Supervisor configuration file.

sudo nano /etc/supervisord.conf

Add the following lines at the end of the file.

[program:oro_message_consumer]
command=/usr/bin/php /usr/share/nginx/orocrm/app/console --env=prod --no-debug oro:message-queue:consume
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
numprocs=4
autostart=true
autorestart=true
startsecs=0
user=nginx
redirect_stderr=true

Start and enable Supervisor to automatically start at boot time.

sudo systemctl start supervisord
sudo systemctl enable supervisord

You can view the status of the processes by running the following.

sudo supervisorctl status

You should see that the processes are running.

[user@aklwebhost ~]$ sudo supervisorctl status
oro_message_consumer:oro_message_consumer_00   RUNNING   pid 13596, uptime 0:02:13
oro_message_consumer:oro_message_consumer_01   RUNNING   pid 13595, uptime 0:02:13
oro_message_consumer:oro_message_consumer_02   RUNNING   pid 13594, uptime 0:02:13
oro_message_consumer:oro_message_consumer_03   RUNNING   pid 13593, uptime 0:02:13

OroCRM is now installed on your server. You can now use the application to manage the routine tasks of your organization. To learn more about OroCRM, you can visit its official website.

PHP-based Zikula is an open-source framework for online applications. With Zikula, you can create editable and interactive webpages. It is a cross-platform program that works with every widely used operating system. For database-related tasks, Zikula uses Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL on the back end.

We’ll talk about installing Zikula on a CentOS 7 server in this article.

Prerequisites

• AKLWEB HOST CentOS 7 server instance that has just been deployed.
• A user on your server who is not root but has sudo capabilities set up.
• 192.168.15.110 set as a static IP address on your machine. This would be your server’s primary IP address.

Step 1: Update the system

First, update your system to the latest stable version by running the following command:

sudo yum update -y
sudo reboot

Step 2: Install LAMP Server Packages

You will need to install Apache, MariaDB, PHP and other required PHP modules on your system. You can install all of these packages with the following command:

sudo yum install httpd mariadb mariadb-server php php-common php-mysql php-mcrypt php-gd php-xml php-mbstring php-xmlrpc unzip wget -y

Once the installation is complete, start both Apache and MariaDB services and enable them to start at boot with the following commands:

sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable httpd
sudo systemctl enable mariadb

Configure MariaDB Database By default

MariaDB installation is not hardened, so you will need to secure it first. You can secure it with the following script:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Answer all of the questions as follows.

Set root password? [Y/n] n
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Next, login to the MariaDB console.

mysql -u root -p

This will prompt you for a password, enter your MariaDB root password. After logging in, create a database for Zikula:

MariaDB [(none)]>CREATE DATABASE zikuladb;
MariaDB [(none)]>GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on zikuladb.* to 'user'@'localhost' identified by 'password';
MariaDB [(none)]>FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]>exit

Install Zikula First

you will need to download the latest version of the Zikula CMS from GitHub. You can also download it using the wget command.

wget https://github.com/zikula/core/releases/download/1.4.6/Zikula_Core-1.4.6.build119.zip

Extract the downloaded zip archive.

unzip Zikula_Core-1.4.6.build119.zip

Move the extracted directory into the Apache root directory.

sudo mv Zikula_Core-1.4.6 /var/www/html/zikula

Give necessary permission to zikula directory.

sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/zikula

Access Zikula Web Interface

Before accessing Zikula, you will need to allow port 80 through firewalld. You can do this with the following command:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=80/tcp
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Open your web browser and type the URL http://192.168.15.110/install.php or http://your-domain.com/install.php, then complete the required the steps to finish the installation.

Thats it. You have successfully installed Zikula on your CentOS 7 server.