How to Install Bolt CMS on Ubuntu

In this blog post we will show you how to install Bolt CMS on Ubuntu, with Nginx and MariaDB. Bolt is a lightweight CMS, written in PHP and it’s built upon the Silex framework. This tutorial should work on other Linux VPS systems as well, but was tested and written for Ubuntu. Installing Bolt CMS on Ubuntu  is an easy task if you carefully follow the steps bellow.

1. Update the system and install necessary packages.

root@vps:~# apt-get -y update && apt-get -y upgrade
root@vps:~# apt-get install python-software-properties curl git

2. Install MariaDB and create a database.

root@vps:~#  apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xcbcb082a1bb943db
root@vps:~# add-apt-repository 'deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/mariadb/repo/10.0/ubuntu trusty main'
root@vps:~# apt-get -y update
root@vps:~# echo -e "Package: *\nPin: origin ftp.osuosl.org\nPin-Priority: 1000" | tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/mariadb
root@vps:~# apt-get install mariadb-server
root@vps:~# mysql -uroot -p
MariaDB [(none)]> create database bolt;
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON bolt.* TO 'bolt'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'boltPassword'
MariaDB [(none)]> flush privileges;
MariaDB [(none)]> \q;

3. Install PHP and Nginx

apt-get install nginx php5-fpm php5-cli php5-mysql php5-mcrypt php5-curl php5-sqlite

Install Composer

root@vps:~# curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
root@vps:~# mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

4. Create a root directory for your web site and clone the git repository from github

root@vps:~# mkdir -p /var/www/yourwebsite.com/{public_html,logs}
root@vps:~# git clone https://github.com/bolt/bolt.git /var/www/yourwebsite.com/public_html
root@vps:~# cd /var/www/yourwebsite.com/public_html
root@vps:~# composer install

5. Configure the database

root@vps:~# cp app/config/config.yml.dist app/config/config.yml

Change the database settings in app/config/config.yml

database:
  driver: mysql
  username: bolt
  password: boltPassword
  databasename: bolt

6. Nginx configuration.

Create a new Nginx server block with the following content

root@vps:~# cat <<'EOF' > /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourwebsite.com
server {
    server_name yourwebsite.com;
    listen 80;
    root /var/www/yourwebsite.com/public_html;
    access_log /var/www/yourwebsite.com/logs/access.log;
    error_log /var/www/yourwebsite.com/logs/error.log;
    index index.php;
 
    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }
 
    location ~* /thumbs/(.*)$ {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /app/classes/timthumb.php?$query_string;
    }
 
    location /app/classes/upload {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /app/classes/upload/index.php?$query_string;
    }
 
    location ~* \.(?:ico|css|js|gif|jpe?g|png|ttf|woff)$ {
        access_log off;
        expires 30d;
        add_header Pragma public;
        add_header Cache-Control "public, mustrevalidate, proxy-revalidate";
    }
 
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(.*)$;
        fastcgi_keep_conn on;
        include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    }
 
    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
 
    location /app {
        deny all;
    }
 
    location ~ /vendor {
        deny all;
    }
 
    location ~ \.db$ {
        deny all;
    }
}
EOF

Symlink it and restart the server

root@vps:~# ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourwebsite.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/yourwebsite.com
root@vps:~# /etc/init.d/nginx restart

6. Set the correct permissions

root@vps:~# chown -R www-data: /var/www/yourwebsite.com/public_html/

That’s it. Now open your browser, type the address of your website and create the first user.

Of course, you don’t have to Install Bolt CMS on Ubuntu, if you use one of our Ubuntu VPS Hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install bolt cms on your Ubuntu-based server, for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately. You can also check our guide on how to Install Bolt CMS on Centos 7 for updates.

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