How to Install Live Helper Chat on Pop!_OS

Live Helper Chat is a free, open source live support solution that allows you to provide real-time support to your website visitors. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps of installing Live Helper Chat on Pop!_OS.

Prerequisites:

  • A running instance of Pop!_OS
  • Sudo privileges

Step 1: Install Required Dependencies

Before we proceed, we need to install some required dependencies that Live Helper Chat relies on. To do so, open the terminal and run the following command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y apache2 mariadb-server php php-common php-xml php-mysql php-xmlrpc php-curl php-gd php-imagick php-cli php-dev php-imap php-mbstring php-opcache php-soap php-zip

Step 2: Download and Install Live Helper Chat

  1. Download the latest version of Live Helper Chat from the official website https://livehelperchat.com/download/.
  2. Unpack the downloaded archive. To do so, open the terminal, navigate to the directory where you downloaded the file and run:
tar -xvf livehelperchat-X.Y.Z.zip
  1. Move the extracted directory to your web root directory. By default, the web root directory in Pop!_OS is /var/www/html/, so run:
sudo mv livehelperchat-X.Y.Z /var/www/html/livehelperchat

Step 3: Configure Apache

To serve Live Helper Chat with Apache, you need to create a virtual host configuration file. To create the file, open the terminal and run:

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

Then add the following lines to the file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/livehelperchat

    <Directory /var/www/html/livehelperchat>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/livehelperchat-error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/livehelperchat-access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Replace example.com with your domain name or IP address.

Save and close the file.

Step 4: Enable the Virtual Host

After creating the virtual host configuration file, you need to enable it. To do so, run:

sudo a2ensite livehelperchat.conf

Then restart Apache for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 5: Configure MariaDB

Next, we need to create a new database and a user for Live Helper Chat.

  1. Log in to MariaDB with the following command:
sudo mysql -u root
  1. Create a new database for Live Helper Chat and grant privileges to a new user:
CREATE DATABASE livehelperchat;
CREATE USER 'lhcuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON livehelperchat.* TO 'lhcuser'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Replace 'password' with a strong and secure password.

Step 6: Run the Web Installer

Open your web browser and go to http://yourdomain.com/livehelperchat/index.php/install/

Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation process. When prompted for database details, use the following:

  • Database name: livehelperchat
  • Database username: lhcuser
  • Database password: the password you set in step 5

After successfully installing Live Helper Chat, remove the install directory:

sudo rm -rf /var/www/html/livehelperchat/install/

Conclusion

Now that you have successfully installed Live Helper Chat on your Pop!_OS instance, you can start using it to provide real-time support to your website visitors.