ImpressCMS is an open source Content Management System (CMS) for building and maintaining dynamic web sites, written in PHP and using a popular open source MySQL database system for content storage. ImpressCMS is extremely useful for managing online communities because it has the ability to create user groups and assign permissions for managing content to each different group. It is fairly easy to install ImpressCMS on an Ubuntu 14.04 VPS. The installation process should take about 5-10 minutes if you follow the very easy steps described below.
At the time of writing this tutorial, ImpressCMS 1.3.8 is the latest stable version available and it requires:
- Apache web server;
- PHP (version 5.3 or higher);
- MySQL(version 5.1 or higher) installed on your Linux VPS;
INSTRUCTIONS:
Login to your VPS via SSH
ssh user@vps_IP
Update the system
[user]$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade
Install MariaDB 10.0
To install MariaDB, run the following command:
[user]$ sudo apt-get install -y mariadb-server
Next, we need to create a database for our ImpressCMS installation.
[user]$ mysql -u root -p MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE impresscms; MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON impresscms.* TO 'impressuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password'; MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; MariaDB [(none)]> \q
Do not forget to replace ‘your-password’ with a strong password.
Install Apache2 web server
[user]$ sudo apt-get install apache2
Install PHP and required PHP modules
To install the latest stable version of PHP version 5 and all necessary modules, run:
[user]$ sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mcrypt php5-mysql php5-gd
Activate the mod_rewrite module with
[user]$ sudo a2enmod rewrite
and restart Apache
[user]$ sudo service apache2 restart
Download and extract the latest version of ImpressCMS on your server:
[user]$ sudo cd /opt && wget https://github.com/ImpressCMS/impresscms/releases/download/v1.3.8/impresscms-1.3.8.zip [user]$ sudo mkdir impresscms [user]$ sudo unzip impresscms-1.3.8.zip -d impresscms/ [user]$ sudo mv impresscms/ /var/www/html/impresscms
All files have to be readable by the web server, so we need to set a proper ownership
[user]$ sudo chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/impresscms/
Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘impresscms.conf’ on your virtual server:
[user]$ sudo touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/impresscms.conf [user]$ sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/impresscms.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/impresscms.conf [user]$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/impresscms.conf
Then, add the following lines:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@yourdomain.com DocumentRoot /var/www/html/impresscms/htdocs/ ServerName your-domain.com ServerAlias www.your-domain.com <Directory /var/www/html/impresscms/htdocs/> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-error_log CustomLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-access_log common </VirtualHost>
Restart the Apache web server for the changes to take effect:
[user]$ sudo service apache2 restart
Open your favorite web browser, navigate to http://your-domain.com/ and if you configured everything correctly the ImpressCMS installer should be starting. You should follow the easy instructions on the install screen inserting the necessary information as requested.
That is it. The ImpressCMS installation is now complete.
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 install ImpressCMS for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.
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