How To Install Neos CMS on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Neos CMS on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Neos is a free and open-source content management system built-in with custom content modeling that provides an effective way to edit and manage content, SEO optimization such as automatic redirects and SEO metadata, and powerful roles and user management.

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 Neos CMS on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 11 (Bullseye).
• 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 Debian 11 Bullseye

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is 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 Debian 11 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, Please read our previous tutorial to install LAMP Server on Debian 11.

Step 3. Installing Composer.

Now we install Composer on the Debian system, you have to run this single command:

wget -O composer-setup.php https://getcomposer.org/installer

To install Composer globally inside the /usr/local/bin directory by running the following command below:

php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

Verify the installed version:

composer --version

Step 4. Installing Neos CMS on Debian 11.

By default, Neos CMS is not available on the Debian 11 base repository. Now run the following command below to download the Neos CMS source code to the directory /var/www/neos:

git clone https://github.com/neos/neos-base-distribution.git /var/www/neos

Next, move to the directory /var/www/neos and run the composer command:

cd /var/www/neos
composer install

We will need to change some folder permissions:

sudo ./flow core:setfilepermissions www-data www-data

Step 5. 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 the 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 WordPress. 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 WordPress installation:

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE neos_db;
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'neos_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password';
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON neos_db.* to neos_user@'localhost';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> exit

Step 6. Configure Apache Virtual Host.

Now we create a new virtual host config file ‘/etc/apache2/sites-available/neos.conf‘ using the following command:

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

Add the following file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/neos/Web
     ServerName example.com
     <Directory /var/www/neos/Web/>
          Options FollowSymlinks
          AllowOverride All
          Require all granted
     </Directory>

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/neos_error.log
     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/neos_access.log combined
    
     <Directory /var/www/neos/Web/>
            RewriteEngine on
            RewriteBase /
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
            RewriteRule ^(.*) index.php [PT,L]
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Save and close, then restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:

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

Step 7. Installing the Let’s Encrypt certificates.

First, install Certbot to your Debian system using the following command below:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache

Then, generate the certificates, with the following command:

sudo certbot --apache -d [your-domain.com]

You will then be prompted to enter an email address for the certificate. After you have entered that you must agree to the T&C’s and decide if you want to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This last step is optional. Once successfully, Reload Apache again to load all the new configurations.

Step 8. Configure Firewall.

Now we configure firewall requests of the apache web server, and open a port in the firewall:

sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw reload

Step 9. Accessing Neos CMS  Web Interface.

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

Next, enter the setup password from /var/www/neos/Data/SetupPassword.txt the file and click on the Login button.

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

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Neos. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of Neos CMS on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Neos website.