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 Debian 9 (stretch) 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 Debian 9 (stretch).
- A non-root user with sudo privileges.
Initial steps
Check your Debian system version:
lsb_release -ds # Debian GNU/Linux 9.7 (stretch)
Set up the timezone:
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
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:
apt update && apt upgrade -y
Install some essential packages that are necessary for basic administration of the Debian operating system:
apt install -y curl wget vim git sudo unzip socat bash-completion dirmngr apt-transport-https
Step 1 - Install PHP and necessary PHP extensions
Pagekit CMS platform requires PHP version 7.0 or greater. By default Debian 9 has PHP version 7.0 in its default software repositories which is fine for October CMS.
Download and install PHP 7.0 and required PHP extensions:
sudo apt install -y php7.0 php7.0-cli php7.0-fpm php7.0-common php7.0-mbstring php7.0-zip php7.0-mysql php7.0-sqlite3 php7.0-curl php7.0-xml
To show PHP compiled in modules, you can run:
php -m ctype curl exif fileinfo . . . . . .
Check PHP version:
php --version # PHP 7.0.33-0+deb9u1 (cli) (built: Dec 7 2018 11:36:49) ( NTS ) # Copyright (c) 1997-2017 The PHP Group # Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Zend Technologies # with Zend OPcache v7.0.33-0+deb9u1, Copyright (c) 1999-2017, by Zend Technologies
PHP-FPM service is automatically started and enabled on reboot on Debian 9 system, so there is no need to start and enable it manually. 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. Debian team replaced MySQL with MariaDB as the default database from Debian 9 (stretch), so 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 version 10.2 database server from the official MariaDB repo:
sudo apt install -y software-properties-common dirmngr apt-transport-https sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xF1656F24C74CD1D8 sudo add-apt-repository 'deb [arch=amd64,i386,ppc64el] https://mirrors.nxthost.com/mariadb/repo/10.2/debian stretch main' sudo apt update sudo apt install -y mariadb-server
NOTE: You will be prompted for root user password. Enter strong password and continue.
Check the MariaDB version:
mysql --version # mysql Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.22-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2
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:
Enter current password for root (enter for none): Press Enter Set root password? [Y/n] Y 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
Log into MariaDB as the root user:
sudo mysql -u root -p # Enter password
Create a MariaDB database and user that you will use for your installation of Pagekit, and remember the credentials:
CREATE DATABASE dbname; GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Exit from MariaDB shell:
quit
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
Install NGINX web server:
sudo apt install -y nginx
Check the NGINX version:
sudo nginx -v # nginx version: nginx/1.10.3
Configure NGINX for Pagekit by running:
sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/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$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
}
}
Activate the new pagekit.conf configuration by linking the file to the sites-enabled directory.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/pagekit.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
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
Change ownership of the /var/www/pagekit directory to www-data.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/pagekit
Step 6 - Complete the Pagekit setup
Open your site in a web browser and you should see the following page:
Pagekit web installer
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 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.
