The setup below show users and students how to install Pico CMS on Ubuntu with Nginx and PHP 7.2-FPM support. Our previous tutorial showed you how to install Pico with Apache2 HTTP and PHP 7.2 support.
Pico is a free open source, flat-file CMS (Content Management System) that allows you build fully functional websites or blogs with no administration backend or database to deal with. Just upload the web content files to your server and enjoy!
With Pico, you simply create .md files in the content folder and those files become your pages. 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 comes all features that you need but is smaller than WordPress, like SEO friendly design, flexible CSS framework and more.
For more about Pico, please check it homepage.
This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to install Pico on Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 LTS / 18.10 with Nginx and PHP 7.2-FPM support.
Step 1: Install Nginx HTTP Server
Pico CMS requires a web server and Nginx HTTP server is probably the most second popular open source web server available today. To install Nginx 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
Now that Nginx is installed. to test whether the web server is working, open your browser and browse to the URL below.
If you see the page above, then Nginx is successfully installed.
Step 2: Install PHP 7.2-FPM and Related Modules
Pico CMS is a PHP based CMS and PHP is required. However, PHP 7.2-FPM may not be available in Ubuntu default repositories. To run PHP 7.2-FPM on Ubuntu 16.04 and previous, you may need to run the commands below:
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.2-FPM
sudo apt update
Next, run the commands below to install PHP 7.2-FPM 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 configuration file for Nginx.
sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
The lines below is a good settings for most PHP based CMS. Update the configuration file with these and save.
file_uploads = On allow_url_fopen = On short_open_tag = On memory_limit = 256M cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0 upload_max_filesize = 100M max_execution_time = 360 date.timezone = America/Chicago
Everytime you make changes to PHP configuration file, you should also restart Nginx web server. To do so, run the commands below:
sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
Now that PHP is installed, to test whether it’s functioning, create a test file called phpinfo.php in Nginx default root directory. ( /var/www/html/)
sudo nano /var/www/html/phpinfo.php
Then type the content below and save the file.
<?php phpinfo( ); ?>
Next, open your browser and browse to the server’s hostname or IP address followed by phpinfo.php
/phpinfo.php
You should see PHP default test page.
Step 4: Download Pico Latest Release
To get Pico latest release you may want to use Github repository. Install Composer, Curl and other dependencies to get started.
sudo apt install curl git curl -sS | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer
After installing curl and Composer above, change into the Nginx root directory and download Pico packages from Github.
cd /var/www/html/ sudo composer create-project picocms/pico-composer pico
Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for Pico to adjust the directory permissions.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/pico/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/pico/
Step 5: Configure Nginx Pico Site
Finally, configure Nginx configuration file for pico. This file will control how users access Pico content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called pico
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/pico
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/pico;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
client_max_body_size 100M;
autoindex off;
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 Pico Site and Rewrite Module
After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below, then restart Nginx server.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/pico /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
Next, open your browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address and you should see Pico page.
Pico began as a databaseless flat file content management system. 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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