Install Croogo on an Ubuntu VPS with Nginx and MariaDB

In this post, we will cover how to install Croogo on an Ubuntu VPS with the latest versions of Nginx and MariaDB. Croogo is a free, open-source, content management system released under the MIT license, written in PHP and it’s built upon the CakePHP MVC framework. This should work on other Linux VPS systems as well but was tested and written for Ubuntu 14.04.

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

Install MariaDB 10 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 croogo;
MariaDB [(none)]>; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON croogo.* TO 'croogo'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'croogoPassword'
MariaDB [(none)]>; flush privileges;
MariaDB [(none)]>; \q;

Install PHP and Nginx

The latest version of Nginx 1.6.2 is not available via the default Ubuntu repositories, so we will add the “nginx/stable” PPA, update the system and install the nginx package.

root@vps:~#add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/stable
root@vps:~# apt-get update
root@vps:~# apt-get install nginx php5-fpm php-cli php5-mysql php5-mcrypt

Install Composer

In case you never heard of composer, it is a dependency manager for PHP with which you can install packages. In other words, composer will pull all the required libraries you need for your project.

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

Create a root directory for your web site and install croogo

root@vps:~# mkdir -p /var/www/yourwebsite.com/{public_html,logs}
root@vps:~# cd /var/www/yourwebsite.com/public_html
root@vps:~# composer create-project croogo/app public_html

PHP

CakePHP requires PHP mcrypt extension to be installed, so we need to enable the previously installed mcrypt extension by running the following command:

root@vps:~# php5enmod mcrypt

and restart php fpm for the changes to take effect.

root@vps:~# service php5-fpm restart

Nginx

Create a new Nginx server block with the following content:

root@vps:~# cat <<'EOF' >; /etc/nginx/conf.d/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 ~* \.(?: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;
    }

}
EOF

Test the Nginx configuration and restart the server by  running the following commands:

root@vps:~# nginx -t
root@vps:~# /etc/init.d/nginx restart

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 and follow the installation wizard.

For more information, please check out the official Croogo website.

Of course you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Linux VPS Hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to set this up for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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