How To Install Backdrop CMS on CentOS 8

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Backdrop CMS on CentOS 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Backdrop CMS is a simple, lightweight, and easy-to-use Content Management System used to build attractive, professional websites. It is very simple to use, and even users with minimal technical knowledge can easily create web content using this CMS tool.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Backdrop (CMS) Content Management System on a CentOS 8.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 8.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Backdrop CMS on CentOS 8

Step 1. First of all, make sure that all packages are up to date.

sudo dnf update

Step 2. Installing LAMP Stack.

If you don’t have a LAMP stack already installed on your server, you can follow our guide here.

Step 3. Installing Backdrop CMS on CentOS 8.

Now we download the latest version of Backdrop CMS using the following command:

wget https://codeload.github.com/backdrop/backdrop/zip/refs/tags/1.19.1
unzip 1.19.1.zip
mv backdrop-1.19.1 /var/www/html/backdrop

Give proper permissions to the webroot directory with the following command:

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/backdrop
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/backdrop

Step 4. Configuring MariaDB.

By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. You should read and below each step carefully which will set a root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MariaDB.

mysql_secure_installation

Configure it like this:

- Set root password? [Y/n] y
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Next, we will need to log in to the MariaDB console and create a database for the Backdrop CMS. Run the following command:

mysql -u root -p

This will prompt you for a password, so enter your MariaDB root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in to your database server you need to create a database for Backdrop CMS installation:

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE backdrop;
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YOUR-STRONG-PASSWORD';
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON backdrop.* TO 'user'@'localhost';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES
MariaDB [(none)]> exit

Step 5. Configuring Apache.

Now we configure Apache virtual host file to host Backdrop CMS. You can create it with the following command:

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/backdrop.conf

Add the following line:

<virtualhost *:80>
	ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
        ServerName backdrop.your-domain.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/backdrop
<directory /var/www/html/backdrop>
       allowoverride all
       allow from all
</directory>
       TransferLog /var/log/httpd/backdrop_access.log
       ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/backdrop_error.log
</virtualhost>

Save and close the file. Restart the Apache service for the changes to take effect:

systemctl restart httpd

Step 6. Configure Firewall.

In case of OS firewall is enabled on your server then provide access to ports 80 and 443 to be accessed from outside the network:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Step 7. Accessing the Backdrop CMS Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, Backdrop will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://backdrop.your-domain.com and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Backdrop. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Backdrop Content Management System on CentOS 8 Linux. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Backdrop website.