In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of Habari on your CentOS 7. For those of you who didn’t know, Habari is a free and open-source blog engine written in PHP and currently supports MySQL, SQLite, and PostgreSQL for the database backend and application framework with a modular, object-oriented Core.
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. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Habari in CentOS 7.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 7.
- 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 Habari on CentOS 7
Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.
yum -y update
Step 2. Install LAMP server.
A CentOS 7 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here. Habari is PHP based application, so we will install PHP among with few PHP modules required by the application:
yum install php php-pdo php-common php-mbstring php-gd php-mysql
Step 3. Installing Habari.
The first thing to do is to go to Habari’s download page and download the latest stable version of Habari, At the moment of writing this article it is version 0.9.2:
wget http://habariproject.org/dist/habari-0.9.2.zip
Unpack the Habari archive to the document root directory on your server:
mkdir -p /var/www/html/habari unzip habari-0.9.2.zip -d /var/www/html/habari/
We will need to change some folders permissions:
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/habari/
Step 4. Configuring MariaDB for Habari.
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 Habari. 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 Habari installation:
CREATE DATABASE habari; CREATE USER 'habariuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `habari`.* TO 'habariuser'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit
Step 5. Configuring Apache web server for Habari.
We will create an Apache virtual host for your Habari website. First, create ‘/etc/httpd/conf.d/vhosts.conf’ file with using a text editor of your choice:
nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhosts.conf IncludeOptional vhosts.d/*.conf
Next, create the virtual host:
mkdir /etc/httpd/vhosts.d/ nano /etc/httpd/vhosts.d/yourdomain.com.conf
Add the following lines:
<VirtualHost YOUR_SERVER_IP:80> ServerAdmin webmaster@yourdomain.com DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/habari/" ServerName yourdomain.com ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/yourdomain.com-error_log" CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/yourdomain.com-access_log" combined <Directory "/var/www/html/habari/"> 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 effects:
systemctl restart httpd.service
Step 6. Accessing Habari.
Habari will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com/ or http://your-server-ip 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 Habari. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Habari on your CentOS 7 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Habari website.
