In this tutorial, we will show you how to install FlatPress CMS on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, FlatPress is an open-source, multi-lingual extensible blogging engine that does not require a database. It stores all of its content in text files. It also contains features like support of various plugins, widget support, and customizable themes.
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 FlatPress on a Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 18.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
- 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 useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install FlatPress CMS on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Step 2. Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MariaDB, and PHP) server.
An Ubuntu 18.04 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here. Also, install all required PHP modules:
apt install php7.2 libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2-common php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-soap php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-intl php7.2-mysql php7.2-cli php7.2-zip php7.2-curl
Step 3. Installing FlatPress on Ubuntu.
Download a Flatpress package using the following command:
wget https://github.com/flatpressblog/flatpress/archive/1.1.zip unzip 1.1.zip sudo mv flatpress-1.1 /var/www/flatpress
We will need to change some folders permissions:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/flatpress/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/flatpress/
Step 5. Configuring Apache for FlatPress.
Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘flatpress.conf’ on your virtual server:
touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/flatpress.conf ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/flatpress.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/flatpress.conf nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/flatpress.conf
Add the following lines:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@your_domain_name.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/flatpress/
ServerName your_domain_name.com
<Directory /var/www/flatpress/>
Options FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Save and close the file. Restart the Apache service for the changes to take effect:
sudo a2ensite flatpress.conf sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo systemctl restart apache2
Step 5. Accessing FlatPress.
FlatPress will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com or http://server-ip-address and complete the required steps to finish the installation. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed FlatPress. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the FlatPress content management system on Ubuntu 18.04. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official FlatPress website.
