How to Install Pagekit CMS on CentOS 7

Author: Blago Eres

Pagekit is modern, intuitive, modular, and flexible open source (MIT license) CMS built with Symfony components and Vue.js. It gives you the tools to create beautiful websites. It has a rich theme and plugin ecosystem.

In this tutorial, we will walk you through the Pagekit CMS installation process on a CentOS 7 operating system by using NGINX as a web server, MariaDB as a database server, and optionally you can secure transport layer by using acme.sh client and Let's Encrypt certificate authority to add SSL support.

Requirements

To install Pagekit, make sure your server meets the following requirements:

Apache version 2.2 or greater or NGINX web server.
MySQL version 5.1 or greater or SQLite 3.
PHP version 5.5.9 or greater.
Required PHP extensions: JSON, Session, ctype, Tokenizer, SimpleXML, DOM, mbstring, PCRE 8.0+, ZIP and PDO with MySQL or SQLite drivers.
Optional PHP extensions: cURL, iconv and XML Parser, as well as APC or XCache for caching.

Prerequisites

A system running CentOS 7.
A non-root user with sudo privileges.

Initial steps

Check your CentOS version:

cat /etc/centos-release
# CentOS Linux release 7.6.1810 (Core)

Set up the timezone:

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

Update your operating system packages (software). This is an important first step because it ensures you have the latest updates and security fixes for your operating system's default software packages:

sudo yum update -y

Install some essential packages that are necessary for basic administration of the CentOS operating system:

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

Step 1 - Install PHP and necessary PHP extensions

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-mbstring php72w-zip php72w-mysql php72w-sqlite3 php72w-curl php72w-xml

To show PHP compiled in modules, you can run:

php -m

ctype
curl
exif
fileinfo
. . .
. . .

Check the PHP version:

php --version
# PHP 7.2.14 (cli) (built: Jan 12 2019 12:47:33) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Zend Technologies
#     with Zend OPcache v7.2.14, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

Start and enable PHP-FPM service:

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

We can move on to the next step, which is the database installation and setup.

Step 2 - Install MariaDB and create a database for Pagekit

Pagekit CMS supports MySQL, MariaDB and SQLite databases. In this tutorial, we will use MariaDB as the database server. If you want to install original MySQL you can add and use official MySQL repository maintained by Oracle.

Install MariaDB database server:

sudo yum install -y mariadb-server

Check the MariaDB version:

mysql --version

Start and enable MariaDB service:

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

Run mysql_secure installation script to improve MariaDB security and set the password for MariaDB root user:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Answer each of the questions:

Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD plugin? N
New password: your_secure_password
Re-enter new password: your_secure_password
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] Y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] Y
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] Y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] Y

Connect to MariaDB shell as the root user:

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password

Create an empty MariaDB database and user for Bolt CMS and remember the credentials:

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

Exit from MariaDB:

MariaDB> exit

Replace dbname, username and password with your own names.

Step 3 - Install Acme.sh client and obtain Let's Encrypt certificate (optional)

Securing your website with HTTPS is not necessary, but it is a good practice to secure your site traffic. In order to obtain an SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt we will use Acme.sh client. Acme.sh is a pure UNIX shell software for obtaining SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt with zero dependencies.

Download and install acme.sh:

sudo su - root
git clone https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh.git
cd acme.sh 
./acme.sh --install --accountemail your_email@example.com
source ~/.bashrc
cd ~

Check acme.sh version:

acme.sh --version
# v2.8.1

Obtain RSA and ECC/ECDSA certificates for your domain/hostname:

# RSA 2048
acme.sh --issue --standalone -d example.com --keylength 2048
# ECDSA
acme.sh --issue --standalone -d example.com --keylength ec-256

If you want fake certificates for testing you can add --staging flag to the above commands.

To list your issued certs you can run:

acme.sh --list

Create a directory to store your certs. We will use /etc/letsencrypt directory.

mkdir -p /etc/letsencrypt/example.com
sudo mkdir -p /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc

Install/copy certificates to /etc/letsencrypt directory.

# RSA
acme.sh --install-cert -d example.com \ 
        --cert-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/cert.pem \
        --key-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/private.key \
        --fullchain-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/fullchain.pem \
        --reloadcmd "sudo systemctl reload nginx.service"

# ECC/ECDSA
acme.sh --install-cert -d example.com --ecc \
        --cert-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/cert.pem \
        --key-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/private.key \
        --fullchain-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/fullchain.pem \
        --reloadcmd "sudo systemctl reload nginx.service"

After running the above commands, your certificates and keys will be in:

For RSA: /etc/letsencrypt/example.com directory.
For ECC/ECDSA: /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc directory.

All the certificates will be automatically renewed every 60 days.

After obtaining certs, exit from root user and return back to normal sudo user:

exit

Step 4 - Install NGINX and configure NGINX for Pagekit

Download and install Nginx from the CentOS repository:

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the Nginx version:

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 for Pagekit by running:

sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/pagekit.conf

And populate the file with the following configuration:

server {
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    listen [::]:80;
    listen 80;
    
    server_name example.com;
    
    index index.php index.html;
    root /var/www/pagekit;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/private.key;
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/private.key;

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

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        try_files $fastcgi_script_name =404;
        set $path_info $fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $path_info;
        fastcgi_index index.php; include fastcgi.conf;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    }
    
}

Check NGINX configuration for syntax errors:

sudo nginx -t

Reload NGINX service:

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Step 5 - Download and install Pagekit CMS

Create a document root directory where Pagekit should reside in:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/pagekit

Change ownership of the /var/www/pagekit directory to [your_user]:

sudo chown -R [your_user]:[your_user] /var/www/pagekit

Navigate to document root:

cd /var/www/pagekit

Download the latest stable release of Pagekit CMS via wget:

wget https://github.com/pagekit/pagekit/releases/download/1.0.16/pagekit-1.0.16.zip

Unpack Pagekit CMS content and remove downloaded .zip file.

unzip pagekit-1.0.16.zip
rm pagekit-1.0.16.zip

Provide the appropriate ownership:

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

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

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

Restart PHP-FPM service:

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Navigate to the folder where you uploaded Bolt CMS in your web browser and follow the instructions on the screen.

Step 6 - Complete the Pagekit setup

Open your site in a web browser and you should see the following page:

Click on the right arrow icon to proceed with the installation. Choose your language and click "Next" button:

Next, choose you database either SQLite or MySQL and populate required fields and click "Next" button:

After that setup your site by entering Site Titel and creating an admin user account:

And that should be it. You will be redirected to Pagekit login page. Provide your username and password to log into Pagekit dashboard.

That's all. If you stuck, check out the official Pagekit docs.

Links

How to Install Pagekit CMS on CentOS 7