GrandCMS is free and open-source standalone software for website owners. Using GrandCMS you can easily create and maintenance your own site.
In order to run Grand CMS, you have to install the following requirements on your sever:
- Web Server (Apache is recommended)
- PHP version 5.3 or newer
- Database server (MySQL is recommended)
So, in this tutorial we will show you how to install GrandCMS on an Ubuntu VPS with Apache, MySQL and PHP.
Log in to your Ubuntu virtual server via SSH as user root
ssh root@IP_Adress
Start a screen session by executing the following command in the terminal:
screen -U -S grandcms
Install some packages that are needed for the GrandCMS installation
apt-get install wget unzip
Update all packages installed on your Ubuntu server.
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
Next, we will install Apache web server
apt-get install apache2
Once it is installed, start the web server and enable it to automatically start on server reboot
systemctl start apache2 systemctl enable apache2
GrandCMS stores its information in a database, so we will install MySQL database server and create a new user and database for GrandCMS
apt-get install mysql-server
You will be prompted to set a password for the MySQL ‘root’ user. Use a strong password – it’s best to use a combination of letters and numbers and minimum 10 characters long. This MySQL user will have full access to all databases.
After the installation, start the MySQL database server and enable it to start at boot time
systemctl start mysql systemctl enable mysql
Once the MySQL database server is started, login as user root and create a new MySQL user and database for GrandCMS
mysql -u root -p CREATE DATABASE grandcms; CREATE USER 'grandcmsuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `grandcms`.* TO 'grandcmsuser'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit
GrandCMS is a PHP based application so we need to install PHP and a few PHP extension required by the application.
apt-get install php php-mysql php-mcrypt libapache2-mod-php php-curl php-gd
Now, go to GrandCMS’s official website and download the latest stable release of their application. At the moment of writing this tutorial it is version 0.2.0.1.1
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/grandcms/grandcms_v0.2.0.1.1.zip
Unpack the GrandCMS zip archive
unzip grandcms_v0.2.0.1.1.zip
It contains an ‘upload’ directory and a few files with instructions and license details.
Move the upload directory to the document root directory on your server
mv upload/ /var/www/html
Rename the directory
mv /var/www/html/upload /var/www/html/grandcms
And change the ownership
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/grandcms
Rename config-dist.php to config.php and admin/config-dist.php to admin/config.php
cd /var/www/html/grandcms mv config-dist.php config.php mv admin/config-dist.php admin/config.php
Create a virtual host directive for the domain name.
vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourdomain.conf
Add the following content to the virtual host directive
ServerAdmin webmaster@yourdomain.com DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/grandcms/" ServerName yourdomain.com ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com ErrorLog "/var/log/apache2/yourdomain.com-error_log" CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/yourdomain.com-access_log" combined <Directory "/var/www/html/grandcms/"> DirectoryIndex index.html index.php Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Require all granted
Replace ‘yourdomain.com’ with your actual domain.
Enable the configuration
a2ensite yourdomain
and restart Apache web server for the changes to take effect
service apache2 reload
Now, open your favorite web browser, visit http://yourdomain.com to start the web installed and follow the instructions to complete the installation.
