How To Install Neos CMS on AlmaLinux 8

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Neos CMS on AlmaLinux 8. For those of you who didn’t know, Neos CMS is a free and open-source Content Management System (CMS). Neos offers a rich set of features such as inline editing, supports multiple websites on a single installation, built-in SEO tools, human-readable URLs, plugin manager, device preview, and supports multiple templates.

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 Neos Open Source Content Application Framework on an AlmaLinux 8. You can follow the same instructions for Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and Rocky Linux distributions.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: AlmaLinux 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 Neos CMS on AlmaLinux 8

Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install epel-release

Step 2. Installing a LAMP server.

An AlmaLinux LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here.

Step 3. Installing Composer.

Before installing Neos, you will need to install Composer to your system:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer -o composer-setup.php
sudo php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

Verify the Composer installation:

composer --version

Step 4. Installing Neos CMS on AlmaLinux 8.

By default, Neos CMS is not available on the AlmaLinux 8 base repository. Now we use Composer to install Neos and its dependencies:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/neos
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/neos
cd /var/www/neos
composer create-project --no-dev neos/neos-base-distribution

We will need to change some folders permissions:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/neos
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/neos/

Step 5. Configuring MariaDB for Neos 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 Neos. 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 Neos installation:

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE neos_db;
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'neos'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password';
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON neos_db.* TO 'neos'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
MariaDB [(none)]> ALTER DATABASE neos_db charset=utf8;
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> EXIT;

Step 6. Configure Apache.

We will create an Apache virtual host for your Neos website. First, create ‘/etc/apache/conf.d/vhosts.conf’ file with using a text editor of your choice:

nano /etc/apache/conf.d/vhosts.conf
IncludeOptional vhosts.d/*.conf

Next, create the virtual host:

mkdir /etc/apache/vhosts.d/
nano /etc/apache/vhosts.d/your-domain.com.conf

Add the following lines:

<VirtualHost YOUR_SERVER_IP:80>
   ServerAdmin webmaster@your-domain.com
   DocumentRoot "/var/www/neos/Web/"
   ServerName your-domain.com
   ServerAlias www.your-domain.com
   ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/your-domain.com-error_log"
   CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/your-domain.com-access_log" combined

<Directory "/var/www/neos/Web/">
   DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
   Options FollowSymLinks
   AllowOverride All
   Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

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

sudo systemctl restart httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd

Step 7. Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt SSL Free Certificate

First, we install Certbot using the following command below:

sudo dnf install certbot python3-certbot-apache

Then, install the SSL certificate for Apache as below:

sudo certbot --apache

Proceed to an interactive prompt and install the certificate. If the certificate is installed you will see the below congratulatory message:

Deploying certificate
Successfully deployed certificate for your-domain.com to /etc/httpd/conf.d/your-domain-le-ssl.conf
Congratulations! You have successfully enabled HTTPS on https://your-domain.com

NEXT STEPS:
- The certificate will need to be renewed before it expires. Certbot can automatically renew the certificate in the background, but you may need to take steps to enable that functionality. See https://certbot.org/renewal-setup for instructions.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:
 * Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt:   https://letsencrypt.org/donate
 * Donating to EFF:                    https://eff.org/donate-le
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Step 8. Configure Firewall.

Allow the firewall to HTTP and HTTPS and reload it with the following commands:

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

Step 9. Accessing Neos CMS Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, open your web browser and access the Neos CMS using the URL https://your-domain.com. You will be redirected to the following page:

Then, run the following command in the terminal to get your password:

cat /var/www/neos/Data/SetupPassword.txt

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Neos CMS. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Neos CMS (content management system) on your AlmaLinux 8 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Neos CMS website.