How to install OSSN on macOS

OSSN (Open Source Social Network) is a PHP-based social networking platform that you can install on your macOS machine. Here's a step-by-step tutorial on how to do that.

Requirements

  • macOS
  • PHP 7.1 or higher
  • MySQL 5.6 or higher
  • Apache or Nginx
  • Composer
  • Git

Steps

  1. Open terminal on your macOS.
  2. Install the required software (if not already installed). For instance, for Apache on macOS, you can install it via Homebrew.
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
brew install apache2
  1. Now, let's create a virtual host file for the OSSN project. Run the following command in the terminal:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/other/ossn.conf

Replace nano with your preferred text editor.

  1. Add the following content to the virtual host file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName ossn.local
DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents/ossn"
<Directory /Library/WebServer/Documents/ossn>
	Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
	AllowOverride All
	Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

  1. Save and exit the file.

  2. Enable the new virtual host by running the following command:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

Add the following line to the file:

127.0.0.1 ossn.local

  1. Save and exit the hosts file.

  2. Next, clone the OSSN project from its Github repository by running the following command:

cd /Library/WebServer/Documents
sudo git clone https://github.com/opensource-socialnetwork/opensource-socialnetwork.git ossn
  1. Install the required dependencies using Composer:
cd ossn && composer install --no-dev
  1. Create the data directory for OSSN's file uploads:
sudo mkdir /Library/WebServer/Documents/ossn-data
sudo chmod -R a+rwX /Library/WebServer/Documents/ossn-data
  1. Create the MySQL database for OSSN:
mysql -u root -p

Enter your MySQL password when prompted. Then, in the MySQL shell, run the following commands:

CREATE DATABASE ossn_db;
CREATE USER 'ossn_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'ossn_pass';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ossn_db.* TO 'ossn_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit;
  1. That's it! Restart Apache for the new virtual host to take effect:
sudo apachectl restart

Now you can open your browser and navigate to http://ossn.local to start using OSSN!