Install Automad CMS with Nginx and Let's Encrypt SSL on CentOS 7

Automad is a file-based content management system (CMS) and a template engine written in PHP. All content is stored in human-readable text files instead of a database. An Automad site is therefore fully portable, easy to install, and can be version controlled by using Git or Mercurial. It nevertheless offers database features like searching and tagging. The built-in template engine allows even inexperienced developers and designers to create beautiful themes and templates. In this tutorial, we will go through the Automad CMS installation and setup on CentOS 7 system by using NGINX as a web server.

Requirements

Requirements for installing and running Automad CMS are as follows:

PHP version 5.4 or higher.
Web server software like Nginx or Apache.

Prerequisites

A CentOS 7 operating system.
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 required PHP extensions:

sudo yum install -y php72w php72w-cli php72w-fpm php72w-common php72w-mbstring php72w-xmlrpc php72w-soap php72w-gd php72w-xml php72w-curl php72w-zip

To show PHP compiled in modules, you can run:

php -m

ctype
curl
exif
fileinfo
. . .
. . .

Check the PHP version:

php --version
# PHP 7.2.19 (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

Step 2 - Install acme.sh client and obtain Let's Encrypt certificate ( optional )

Securing your forum with HTTPS is not necessary, but it is a good practice to secure your site traffic. To obtain a TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt we will use acme.sh client. Acme.sh is a simple UNIX shell software for obtaining TLS 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 [email protected]
source ~/.bashrc
cd ~

Check acme.sh version:

acme.sh --version
# v2.8.2

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.

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

For RSA: /home/username/example.com directory.
For ECC/ECDSA: /home/username/example.com_ecc directory.

To list your issued certs you can run:

acme.sh --list

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

mkdir -p /etc/letsecnrypt/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"

All the certificates will be automatically renewed every 60 days.

After obtaining certs exit from root user and return to regular sudo user:

exit

Step 3 - Install and configure NGINX

Download and install NGINX from the CentOS repository:

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the NGINX version:

sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.12.2

Start and enable Nginx service:

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

Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/automad.conf and populate the file with the following configuration:

server {

  listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
  listen 443 ssl http2;
  listen [::]:80;
  listen 80;

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

  server_name example.com;

  root /var/www/automad;

  index index.php index.html;

  client_max_body_size 100M;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
  }


  location ~ \.php$ {
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include fastcgi_params;
  }

}

Check NGINX configuration for syntax errors:

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx:

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Step 4 - Install Automad CMS

Create a document root directory for Automad:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/automad

Navigate to the document root:

cd /var/www/automad

Using curl download the latest release of Automad CMS. Don't forget to bump up the version numbers if there is a newer release:

sudo curl -O -J -L https://automad.org/download

Uncompress the zip archive:

sudo unzip automad-master.zip

Move all Automad files to the document root and remove downloaded zip archive:

sudo mv automad-master/* . && sudo mv automad-master/.* .
sudo rm automad-master.zip
sudo rmdir automad-master

Provide the appropriate ownership:

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

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

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

And set user and group to nginx, like below:

user = nginx
group = nginx

And finally, restart PHP-FPM service for these changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Step 5 - Finish the Automad installation

As the last step, create a user account to use the browser-based user interface called the Dashboard. Therefore navigate to https://example.com/dashboard and follow the instructions.

Before you can use Automad dashboard, you will need to create an account:

Create a user account using the form and download the generated file to your computer. After you will need to move the downloaded file to the "/config" directory within Automad installation directory.

After that you can log in to Automad dashboard:

In the end, Automad admin interface will be displayed:

That's it. Automad installation is finished.

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