How to Install WonderCMS on CentOS 7

Updated on November 21, 2023
How to Install WonderCMS on CentOS 7 header image

WonderCMS is an open source, fast and small flat file CMS written in PHP. WonderCMS source code is hosted on Github. This guide will show you how to install WonderCMS on a fresh CentOS 7 Vultr instance with Nginx as a web server.

Requirements

  • PHP version 7.1 or greater with the curl, mbstring and zip extensions.
  • Web server such as Apache with the mod_rewrite module enabled, Nginx or IIS. This guide will use Nginx.

Before you begin

Check the CentOS version.

cat /etc/centos-release
# CentOS Linux release 7.6.1810 (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 check-update; sudo yum update -y

Install some basic system administration packages if they are not installed.

sudo yum install -y vim curl wget git unzip bash-completion epel-release

For simplicity, disable SELinux and Firewall.

sudo setenforce 0;sudo systemctl stop firewalld;sudo systemctl disable firewalld

Install PHP

Setup the Webtatic YUM repo.

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

Install PHP, as well as the necessary PHP extensions.

sudo yum install -y php72w php72w-cli php72w-fpm php72w-common php72w-curl php72w-zip php72w-mbstring php72w-json

Check the version.

php --version

Start and enable PHP-FPM.

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

Install Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the version.

nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.12.2

Start and enable Nginx.

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

Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/wondercms.conf and configure Nginx for WonderCMS.

server {
  
  listen 80;

  server_name example.com;
  root /var/www/wondercms;

  index index.php;


  location / {
    if (!-e $request_filename) {
      rewrite ^/(.+)$ /index.php?page=$1 last;
    }
  }
  location ~ database.js {
    return 403;
  }

  location ~ \.php(/|$) {
    try_files $uri =404;
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
  }

}

Save the file and exit.

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install WonderCMS

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/wondercms

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

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

Navigate to the document root folder.

cd /var/www/wondercms

Download and unzip WonderCMS.

wget https://github.com/robiso/wondercms/releases/download/2.6.0/WonderCMS-2.6.0.zip
unzip WonderCMS-2.6.0.zip
rm WonderCMS-2.6.0.zip

Move WonderCMS files to the document root directory.

mv wondercms/* . && mv  wondercms/.* .
rmdir wondercms

Create a new directory called /var/lib/php/session/ and change the ownership to nginx.

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

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

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

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

Restart PHP-FPM.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Open your site in a web browser and log in with the default password admin and change the default password afterward.