How to Install Thelia 2.3 on CentOS 7

Thelia is an open source tool for creating e-business websites and managing online content, written in PHP. Thelia source code is hosted on GitHub. This guide will show you how to install Thelia on a fresh CentOS 7 Vultr instance.

Requirements

• PHP
• Required PHP extensions: pdo_mysql, openssl, intl, gd, curl, dom
• safe_mode off
• memory_limit at least 128M, preferably 256M.
• upload_max_filesize: 2M
• date.timezone must be defined
• Nginx
• MySQL/MariaDB

Check the 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 necessary packages.

sudo yum install -y wget vim unzip bash-completion

Disable SELinux.

sudo setenforce 0

Enable the epel repository.

sudo rpm -Uvh https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

Install PHP

Setup the Webtatic YUM repo.

sudo rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

Install PHP 7.0, as well as the required PHP extensions.

sudo yum install -y php70w php70w-cli php70w-fpm php70w-common php70w-intl php70w-mbstring php70w-xml php70w-mysql php70w-curl php70w-dom php70w-gd

Check the version.

php --version

Enable and start php-fpm.

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

Install MariaDB

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 the version.

mysql --version && mysqld --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.14-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using readline 5.1
# mysqld  Ver 10.2.14-MariaDB for Linux on x86_64 (MariaDB Server)

Enable and start MariaDB.

sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
sudo systemctl start 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 MySQL database and user, and remember the credentials.

CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Exit MariaDB.

exit

Step 3 - Install Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the version.

sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.12.2

Enable and start Nginx.

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

Configure Nginx. Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/thelia.conf and populate it with the following.

server {

  listen 80;
  server_name example.com; # Check this
  root /var/www/thelia/web/; # Check this
  index index.php;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ @rewriteapp;
  }

  location @rewriteapp {
    rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 last;
  }

  location ~ ^/(index|index_dev)\.php(/|$) {
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # Check this
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.*)$;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
  }
  
  # ###################################################
  # After installation remove /install/ location block.
  # and restart Nginx
  # ###################################################
  location /install/ {
    alias /var/www/thelia/web/install/; # Check this
    location ~ ^/install/.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|pdf|zip)$ {
      expires 30d;
      access_log off;
      log_not_found off;
    }
    location ~ ^/install/(.+\.php)$ {
      alias /var/www/thelia/web/install/$1; # Check this
      fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # Check this
      fastcgi_index index.php;
      fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
      include fastcgi_params;
    }
  }
  # ###################################################

}

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install Thelia

Navigate to the /var/www directory.

cd /var/www

Download the latest release of Thelia and unzip it.

sudo wget https://thelia.net/download/thelia.zip
sudo unzip thelia.zip
sudo rm thelia.zip
sudo mv thelia_2.3.4/ thelia

Go to the Thelia directory.

cd /var/www/thelia

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

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

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

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

Run sudo vim /etc/php.ini and set post_max_size to 20M.

post_max_size = 20M

Restart php-fpm.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Create the /var/lib/php/session directory and change its ownership to user nginx.

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/php/session
sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/lib/php/session

In your favorite browser, navigate to http://example.com/install and follow the Thelia installation wizard. To access the Thelia administration interface, append /admin to your URL.

After installing Thelia, remove the web/install directory.

sudo rm -rf /var/www/thelia/web/install