Recently, we showed students and new users how to install RazorCMS on Ubuntu with Apache2 HTTP support. This post shows you how to use Nginx HTTP server instead to run RazorCMS.
RazorCMS is a flat-file CMS (Content Management System), allowing you to create websites without the need of a separate database and prioritizes simplicity and speed. It offers features that may not be available to other PHP based CMS, like WordPress Joomla or Drupal.
For one, it doesn’t need a database server, call it database-less. It also provides native markdown WYSIWYG support, SEO friendly, flexible CSS framework and easily installation and management.
RazorCMS uses a unique algorithm to find or list any content based on date, type, category, tag, or author, and the performance will remain fast even if y0u have thousands of posts and hundreds of tags.
For more about RazorCMS, please check it homepage.
This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to install RazorCMS on Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 LTS with Nginx and PHP 7.2 support.
Step 1: Install Nginx HTTP Server on Ubuntu
Nginx HTTP Server is the most popular web server in use. so install it, since RazorCMS needs it.
To install Nginx HTTP on Ubuntu server, run the commands below.
sudo apt update sudo apt install nginx
After installing Nginx, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable Nginx service to always start up with the server boots.
sudo systemctl stop nginx.service sudo systemctl start nginx.service sudo systemctl enable nginx.service
To test Nginx setup, open your browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address and you should see Nginx default test page as shown below. When you see that, then Nginx is working as expected.
Step 2: Install PHP 7.2 and Related Modules
PHP 7.2 may not be available in Ubuntu default repositories for some systems. if you need it, you will have to get it from third-party repositories.
Run the commands below to add the below third party repository to upgrade to PHP 7.2
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.2
sudo apt update
Next, run the commands below to install PHP 7.2 and related modules.
sudo apt install php7.2-fpm php7.2-common php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-sqlite3 php7.2-soap php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-cli php7.2-curl php7.2-zip
After installing PHP 7.2, run the commands below to open PHP default config file for Nginx.
sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
Then make the changes on the following lines below in the file and save. The value below are great settings to apply in your environments.
file_uploads = On allow_url_fopen = On memory_limit = 256M cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0 upload_max_filesize = 100M max_execution_time = 360 date.timezone = America/Chicago
After making the change above, save the file and close out.
Step 3: Restart Nginx
After installing PHP and related modules, all you have to do is restart Nginx to reload PHP configurations.
To restart Nginx, run the commands below
sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
Step 4: Download RazorCMS Latest Release
Next, visit RazorCMS site and download the latest package. or run the commands below to download RazorCMS pckages from github.
After downloading, run the commands below to extract the downloaded file and move it into a new RazorCMS root directory. After that, change into RazorCMS root directory to install PHP required packages.
cd /tmp wget unzip 3.4.5.zip sudo mv razorCMS-3.4.5/ /var/www/html/razorcms
Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for RazorCMS to function properly.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/razorcms/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/razorcms/
Step 5: Configure Nginx RazorCMS Site
Finally, configure Nginx configuration file for RazorCMS. This file will control how users access RazorCMS content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called razorcms
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/razorcms
Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the highlighted line with your own domain name and directory root location.
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
root /var/www/html/razorcms;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
client_max_body_size 100M;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
Save the file and exit.
After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below
Step 6: Enable the RazorCMS Site
After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below, then restart Nginx server.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/razorcms /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
Restart Nginx
sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
Next, open your browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address and you should see RazorCMS page. enter your blog info and complete the setup.
Login with the following credentials:
- Login in with the following default credentials:
- Username/email: [email protected]
- Password: password
Enjoy!
razorCMS began as a databaseless flat file content management system, forked from a project called uCMS. It’s structure allowed you to have just the amount of functionality you needed in a flat file CMS solution, adding extensions (blade packs) for further functionality, whilst allowing setup on simple servers with no database.
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