Installing Flarum on Elementary OS

Flarum is an open-source forum software developed in PHP. It is designed to be easy to use and highly customizable. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the steps to install Flarum on Elementary OS.

Prerequisites

Before installing Flarum, make sure you have the following prerequisites installed on your system:

• Apache or Nginx web server
• PHP version 7.2.9 or greater with the following extensions:
  • PDO MySQL
  • OpenSSL
  • Mbstring
  • Tokenizer
  • JSON
  • Ctype
  • BCMath
• MySQL server
• Composer

You can install the above prerequisites using the following command:

sudo apt install apache2 mysql-server php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql openssl php-mbstring php-tokenizer php-json php-ctype php-bcmath composer

Step 1: Download and Install Flarum

To download and install Flarum, follow the steps below:

1. Open a terminal and navigate to the Apache or Nginx web root directory:

cd /var/www/html/

2. Download the latest version of Flarum using composer:

sudo composer create-project flarum/flarum .

3. Change the ownership of the Flarum directory to the web server user:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

Step 2: Create a Database for Flarum

To create a database for Flarum, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to MySQL as the root user:

sudo mysql -u root -p

2. Create a new database and user for Flarum:

CREATE DATABASE flarumdb;
CREATE USER 'flarumuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON flarumdb.* TO 'flarumuser'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Make sure to replace flarumdb, flarumuser, and password with your desired values.

Step 3: Configure Flarum

To configure Flarum, follow the steps below:

1. Rename the .env.example file to .env:

mv .env.example .env

2. Edit the .env file and configure the database settings:

nano .env

# Database configuration
DATABASE_DRIVER=mysql
DATABASE_HOST=localhost
DATABASE_PORT=3306
DATABASE_DATABASE=flarumdb
DATABASE_USERNAME=flarumuser
DATABASE_PASSWORD=password

3. Generate the Flarum application key:

php flarum key:generate

4. Run the Flarum installation wizard:

php flarum install

Follow the prompts and enter your desired settings.

5. Update the Flarum configuration file:

nano /var/www/html/config.php

Change the following settings:

'debug' => false,

// Change the URL to match your domain name
'url' => 'http://yourdomain.com',

// Change the database prefix to a random string
'database' => [
    'prefix' => 'random_string_',
    'driver' => 'mysql',
    'database' => 'flarumdb',
    'username' => 'flarumuser',
    'password' => 'password',
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'port' => '3306',
    'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
    'collation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
    'engine' => 'InnoDB',
],

Save and exit the file.

Step 4: Configure Apache or Nginx

To configure Apache or Nginx, follow the steps below:

Apache

1. Create a new virtual host configuration file:

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

2. Add the following configuration:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName yourdomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/public

    <Directory /var/www/html/public>
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/flarum_error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/flarum_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Make sure to replace yourdomain.com with your desired domain name.

3. Enable the virtual host configuration:

sudo a2ensite flarum.conf
sudo systemctl reload apache2

Nginx

1. Create a new server block configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/flarum.conf

2. Add the following configuration:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yourdomain.com;

    root /var/www/html/public;
    index index.php index.html;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
    }

    error_log /var/log/nginx/flarum_error.log;
    access_log /var/log/nginx/flarum_access.log;
}

Make sure to replace yourdomain.com with your desired domain name.

3. Enable the server block configuration:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/flarum.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Step 5: Access Flarum

You can now access Flarum by navigating to http://yourdomain.com in your web browser. If everything was configured correctly, you should see the Flarum homepage.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Flarum on Elementary OS. You can now start customizing and using Flarum to power your online forum.