How to Install Craft CMS on CentOS 7

Craft CMS is an open source CMS written in PHP. Craft CMS source code is hosted on GitHub. This guide will show you how to install Craft CMS on a fresh CentOS 7 Vultr instance.

Requirements

Server Requirements

• PHP 5.3.0 - 7.1.x with safe mode disabled
• MySQL 5.1.0 or later, with the InnoDB storage engine installed
• A web server (Apache, Nginx, IIS)
• A minimum of 32MB of memory allocated to PHP
• A minimum of 20MB of free disk space
• A minimum of 1MB of database space

Required PHP Extensions

• Reflection Extension
• PCRE Extension
• SPL Extension
• PDO Extension
• PDO MySQL Extension
• Mcrypt Extension
• GD Extension with FreeType Support (unless ImageMagick Extension is installed)
• OpenSSL Extension
• Multibyte String Extension
• JSON Extension
• cURL
• crypt() with BLOWFISH_CRYPT enabled

Optional PHP Extensions

• DOM Extension
• iconv Extension
• ImageMagick Extension
• SimpleXML

Before you begin

Check CentOS version.

cat /etc/centos-release
# CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708 (Core)

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

useradd -c "John Doe" johndoe && passwd johndoe
usermod -aG wheel johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo yum update -y

Install required and useful packages.

sudo yum install -y wget vim unzip bash-completion

Disable SELinux.

sudo setenforce 0

Step 1 - Install PHP and required PHP extensions

CentOS does not provide the latest PHP version in its default software repositories. We’ll need to add a Webtatic YUM repo. For steps on how to do that, you can follow this Vultr guide.

sudo yum install -y php71w php71w-cli php71w-fpm php71w-mysql php71w-mcrypt php71w-gd php71w-mbstring php71w-json php71w-curl php71w-xml php71w-common

Check PHP version.

php --version
# PHP 7.1.14 (cli) (built: Feb  4 2018 09:05:29) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies

Start and enable php-fpm service.

sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Step 2 - Install MariaDB and create database

Download and install MariaDB.

sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo

# Copy/paste this to the /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo file

[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = https://yum.mariadb.org/10.2/centos7-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1


sudo yum install -y MariaDB-server MariaDB-client

Check MariaDB version.

mysql --version && mysqld --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.13-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using readline 5.1
# mysqld  Ver 10.2.13-MariaDB for Linux on x86_64 (MariaDB Server)

Start and enable MariaDB.

sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your MariaDB installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log in to MariaDB as the root user.

mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create a new MariaDB database and user, and remember the credentials.

create database dbname;
grant all on dbname.* to 'username' identified by 'password';
flush privileges;

Exit MySQL.

exit

Step 3 - Install and configure NGINX

Install NGINX server.

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check NGINX version.

sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.12.2

Start and enable NGINX service.

sudo systemctl start nginx.service
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

Configure NGINX. Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/craft.conf and copy/paste the following.

server {
  listen [::]:80;
  listen 80;

  server_name example.com;
  root /var/www/craft/public;

  index index.html index.htm index.php;
  charset utf-8;

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

  location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
    fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";       
  }
}

Test NGINX configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload NGINX.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Step 4 - Download and install Craft CMS

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/craft

Change ownership of the /var/www/craft directory to johndoe.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /var/www/craft

Navigate to document root.

cd /var/www/craft

Download the latest stable release of Craft CMS.

wget https://download.craftcdn.com/craft/2.6/2.6.3012/Craft-2.6.3012.zip

Unzip Craft CMS.

unzip Craft-2.6.3012.zip
rm Craft-2.6.3012.zip

Tell Craft how to connect to your database.

vim craft/config/db.php

Change ownership of the /var/www/craft directory to nginx.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/craft

Run sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and set user and group to nginx. Initially, it will be set to user and group apache.

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
# user = nginx
# group = nginx

Restart php-fpm.service.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Now that everything’s set up, point your browser to http://example.com/admin and follow the Craft installer.

To access Craft's administrative interface, append /admin to your IP/domain.