Flarum is a free and open-source next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free. Flarum source code is hosted on Github. It is designed to be fast, simple, responsive and extensible.
This guide will walk you through the Flarum installation process on a fresh Debian 10 (buster) Vultr instance using PHP, MySQL as a database, and Nginx as a web server.
Requirements
Before you install Flarum, it's important to check that your server meets the requirements. To run Flarum, you will need:
- Apache (with
mod_rewrite
enabled) or Nginx. This guide will use Nginx.
- PHP version 7.1 or greater with the following PHP extensions:
dom
gd
-json
-mbstring
openssl
pdo_mysql
tokenizer
.
- MySQL version 5.6 or greater, or MariaDB version 10.0.5 or greater. This guide will use MySQL.
- Composer
Before you begin
Check the Ubuntu version.
lsb_release -ds
# Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS
Create a new non-root
user account with sudo
access and switch to it.
adduser johndoe --gecos "John Doe"
usermod -aG sudo johndoe
su - johndoe
NOTE: Replace johndoe
with your username.
Set up the timezone.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
Ensure that your system is up to date.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
Install the needed packages.
sudo apt install -y zip unzip curl wget git
Install PHP
Install PHP, as well as the necessary PHP extensions.
sudo apt install -y php7.2 php7.2-cli php7.2-fpm php7.2-common php7.2-mbstring php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-mysql php7.2-curl
Check the version.
php --version
# PHP 7.2.19-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 (cli) (built: Jun 4 2019 14:48:12) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
# with Zend OPcache v7.2.10-0ubuntu0.18.04.1, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies
Install MySQL
Install MySQL.
sudo apt install -y mysql-server
Check the version.
mysql --version
# mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.7.27, for Linux (x86_64) using EditLine wrapper
Run the mysql_secure_installation
script to improve the security of your MySQL installation.
sudo mysql_secure_installation
Log into MySQL as the root user.
sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:
Create a new MySQL database and database user, and remember the credentials.
mysql> CREATE DATABASE dbname;
mysql> GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit
NOTE: Replace dbname
and username
with appropriate names for your setup. Replace password
with a strong password.
Install Nginx
Install Nginx.
sudo apt install -y nginx
Check the version.
sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)
Configure Nginx for Flarum. Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/flarum.conf
and populate the file with the following configuration.
server {
listen [::]:80;
listen 80;
server_name example.com;
root /var/www/flarum/public;
index index.php;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
location ~* \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
}
Save the file and exit with :+W+Q.
Activate the new flarum.conf
configuration by linking the file to the sites-enabled
directory.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/flarum.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
Test the configuration.
sudo nginx -t
Reload Nginx.
sudo systemctl reload nginx.service
Install Composer
Download and install Composer, the dependency manager for PHP.
php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('sha384', 'composer-setup.php') === 'a5c698ffe4b8e849a443b120cd5ba38043260d5c4023dbf93e1558871f1f07f58274fc6f4c93bcfd858c6bd0775cd8d1') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
Check the version.
composer --version
# Composer version 1.9.0 2019-08-02 20:55:32
Install Flarum
NOTE: Flarum is currently in the beta stage. It is not recommended to run it in production just yet unless you know what you are doing. You should wait for a stable release for production usage.
Create a document root directory.
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/flarum
Change ownership of the /var/www/flarum
directory to johndoe
.
sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /var/www/flarum
Navigate to the document root folder.
cd /var/www/flarum
Download the latest release of Flarum via composer
.
composer create-project flarum/flarum . --stability=beta
NOTE: You may run out of memory when installing Flarum via Composer. If that happens, then you'll need to setup Swap.
Change ownership of the /var/www/flarum
directory to www-data
.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/flarum
Open your site in a web browser and follow the instructions on the screen to finish the installation.