How To Install Microweber CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Microweber CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Microweber is a free and open-source drag and drops CMS and website builder written in the PHP programming language and the Laravel Framework. Microweber’s drag-and-drop technology and real-time writing and text editing functionality provide a quick and easy way to create your content, helping turn your website into a rich environment for you to express your thoughts. It also comes with built-in storefront features, allowing you to create an e-commerce site from which you can sell your products on the Internet.

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 Microweber CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, 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 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 Microweber CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

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. Installing the LAMP stack.

A Ubuntu 20.04 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here.

Step 3. Installing Microweber CMS on Ubuntu 20.04.

Now we download the latest version of Microweber from their official page:

sudo mkdir /var/www/html/microweber
wget https://microweber.com/download.php -O microweber-latest.zip
sudo unzip microweber-latest.zip -d /var/www/html/microweber

We will need to change some folders permissions:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/microweber/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/microweber/

Step 4. Configuring MariaDB for Microweber CMS.

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 Microweber 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 Microweber CMS installation:

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE microweberdb;
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'microweber'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password';
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON microweberdb.* TO 'microweber'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> EXIT;

Step 5. Configuring Apache for Microweber.

Now we create a new virtual host for Apache to manage the site properly:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/microweber.conf

Add the following line:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName your-domain.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/microweber/
 
  <Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
  </Directory>
 
  <Directory /var/www/html/microweber/>
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
  </Directory>

  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/microweber_error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/microweber_access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Now, we can restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2ensite microweber.conf 
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 6. Set up HTTPS.

We should enable a secure HTTPS connection on Microweber. We can obtain a free TLS certificate from Let’s Encrypt. Install Let’s Encrypt client (certbot) from Ubuntu 20.04 repository:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache

Next, run the following command to obtain a free TLS certificate using the Apache plugin:

sudo certbot --apache --agree-tos --redirect --staple-ocsp --email you@your-domain.comm -d your-domain.com

If the test is successful, reload Apache for the change to take effect:

sudo apache2ctl -t
sudo systemctl reload apache2

Step 7. Accessing Microweber Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, now open your favorite browser and navigate to https://your-domain.com/ or https://server-ip-address/ and complete the required steps to finish the installation.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Microweber. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Microweber CMS on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Microweber website.