Install October CMS on Ubuntu, with Nginx and MariaDB

In this post, we will cover how to install October CMS on Ubuntu, with Nginx and MariaDB. October is a free, open-source, self-hosted CMS platform, written in PHP and it’s built upon the Laravel framework. This should work on other Linux VPS systems as well but was tested and written for Ubuntu 14.04. Installing October CMS on Ubuntu, is fairly easy task, and it should not take more then 10 minutes.

We are proud to be an Official OctoberCMS Partner 

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

3. Install PHP and Nginx

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

4. Install Composer

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

5. Create a root directory for your web site and download the application source code

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 october/october public_html dev-master

6. Configuration

Open the file app/config/app.php and change:

'url' => 'http://yourwebsite.com'

Open the file app/config/cms.php and change:

'activeTheme' => 'demo',
'backendUri' => '/admin'

Open the file app/config/database.php and and set the database connection parameters.

Run the following artisan commands”

php artisan key:generate
php artisan october:up

7. 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 ~ \.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

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

8. 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 use the default
username: admin
password: admin

Please check the official October website for more details.

Of course, you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Optimized CMS Hosting Stacks, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to Install October CMS on Ubuntu, 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 October CMS on CentOS 7.

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