In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of Textpattern on your Ubuntu 16.04. For those of you who didn’t know, Textpattern is an elegant CMS. It is free open-source software that allows web developers, designers, and bloggers to publish their content within a clean and easy interface. Textpattern comes with a full range of features and it allows you to easily create, edit and publish content on your website.
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 Textpattern on a Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).
- 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 Textpattern on Ubuntu 16.04
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MariaDB, PHP) server.
A Ubuntu 16.04 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here. Also, install all required PHP modules:
apt-get install php5 php5-mysql php5-gd php5-curl libssh2-php
Step 3. Installing Textpattern.
The first thing to do is to go to Textpattern’s download page and download the latest stable version of Textpattern, At the moment of writing this article it is version 4.5.7:
wget https://textpattern.com/file_download/75/textpattern-4.6.2.zip unzip Textpattern-4.6.2.zip -d /var/www/html cd textpattern-4.6.2 cp -a * ..
We will need to change some folders permissions:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/
Step 4. Configuring MariaDB for Textpattern.
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 Textpattern. 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 Textpattern installation:
CREATE DATABASE textpattern; CREATE USER 'Ttextpatternuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `textpattern`.* TO 'textpatternuser'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Step 5. Configuring Apache web server for Textpattern.
Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘textpattern.conf’ on your virtual server:
sudo a2enmod rewrite touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/textpattern.conf ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/textpattern.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/textpattern.conf nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/textpattern.conf
Add the following lines:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@yourdomain.com DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/" ServerName your-domain.com ServerAlias www.your-domain.com <Directory "/var/www/html/"> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-error_log CustomLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-access_log common </VirtualHost>
Now, we can restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:
systemctl restart apache2.service
Step 6. Accessing Textpattern.
Textpattern will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://yourdomain.com/setup/index.php or http://server-ip/setup/index.php 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 Textpattern. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Textpattern content management system (CMS) on your ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Textpattern website.
