How to Install Dotclear on Ubuntu 18.04

In this tutorial, we will be going over how to install and set up Dotclear on a VPS running Ubuntu 18.04. Dotclear is a free and open-source web publishing application, designed to provide a user-friendly interface that allows anyone to publish their ideas on the web. Dotclear is written in PHP and includes many built-in features, such as handling blogs, using XHTML syntax for entries, adding pages, and so on. It also supports several database types, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Dotclear on an Ubuntu 18.04 VPS.

Requirements:

• For the purposes of this tutorial, we will use an Ubuntu Server.
• Full SSH root access (or a user with sudo privileges)

Getting Started

Connect to your server via SSH as the root user using the following command. (Replace “root” with a user that has sudo privileges if necessary):

ssh root@IP_ADDRESS -p PORT_NUMBER

and replace “IP_ADDRESS” and “PORT_NUMBER” with your actual server IP address and SSH port number.

Before starting with the installation, it is a good idea to update your system packages to their latest versions to maximize compatibility.

You can do this by running the following commands:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Step 1 – Apache Web Server Installation

To install the Apache web server, we will run the following command:

apt-get install apache2

Now, we should enable Apache to start automatically upon server boot with:

systemctl enable apache2

We can also check the status of your Apache service with the following command:

systemctl status apache2

Output:

apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/apache2.service.d
           └─apache2-systemd.conf
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2018-12-19 03:44:49 CST; 21min ago
 Main PID: 25985 (apache2)
    Tasks: 7 (limit: 1110)
   CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
           ├─  25985 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─  26383 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─  26384 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─  26385 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─  26386 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─  26387 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           └─16816 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Step 2 – Install PHP

As we mentioned earlier, Dotclear is written in PHP, so we need to install PHP as well as some PHP extensions. To install PHP on your server, run the following command:

apt install php php-curl php-gd php-mbstring php-xml php-xmlrpc php-soap php-intl php-zip

We can check the PHP version currently installed with the following command:

php -v

The output should be similar to this:

PHP 7.2.10-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 (cli) (built: Sep 13 2018 13:45:02) ( 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

Step 3 – Install the MySQL Database Server

In this tutorial, we will use the MySQL Database server to create a database and MySQL user for Dotclear. MySQL is an open-source database management system – it is a very popular choice for managing databases.

To install the MySQL Database Server, we will run the following command:

apt install mysql-server

After the installation is finished, we recommend running a command to further improve the security of your MySQL server. You can run the mysql_secure_installation script by typing the following command:

mysql_secure_installation

This will help you execute important security-related tasks, like setting up a root password, disabling remote root login, etc.

Step 4 – Create a Database for Dotclear

To create a MySQL database for Dotclear, we need to log in to our MySQL server with the following command:

mysql -u root -p

Then enter your MySQL root password that you entered earlier to log in.

Now we will create a new MySQL database named dotclear and create a new MySQL user named dotclearuser with password StrongPassword.

CREATE DATABASE dotclear;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON dotclear.* TO dotclearuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
\q

Do not forget to replace ‘StrongPassword’ with an actual strong password.

Step 5 – Install Dotclear

Now, we need to run the following commands to download the loader script and install Dotclear in the default web server document root directory:

cd /var/www/html
wget https://download.dotclear.org/loader/dotclear-loader.php

We have to ensure that the Apache user has access to Dotclear files.

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

Step 6 – Create the Virtual Host File

To create the virtual host configuration file for your domain, run the following command:

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain.com.conf

Add the following content. Don’t forget to replace your_domain.com with your actual domain name that points to your server:

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin admin@your_domain.com
ServerName your_domain.com
ServerAlias www.your_domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html

<Directory /var/www/html>
     Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
     AllowOverride All
     Require all granted
</Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your_domain.com_error.log 
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your_domain.com_access.log combined 
</VirtualHost>

Close and save the file. We now need to enable the Virtual host configuration file. To enable the Virtual host, run the following command:

ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_domain.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/your_domain.com.conf

Step 7 – Configure Dotclear

In the last step of this tutorial, we need to access the Dotclear loader script and finish the installation.

Open up your preferred web browser and navigate to:
http://your_domain.com/dotclear-loader.php
You will then be presented with the installer page:

We need to click on the ‘Retrieve and unzip Dotclear’ button and follow the on-screen instructions. On the second screen, we need to enter the MySQL database settings, so use the following details:

Database type: MySQLi
Database Host Name: localhost 
Database Name: dotclear
Database User Name: dotclearuser
Database Password: StrongPassword

Next, we need to create a user account. After we create a new user account, we will be redirected to the following page:

Congratulations – you have successfully installed Dotclear on Ubuntu 18.04 Server.

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Of course, you don’t have to install Dotclear on Ubuntu 18.04 if you have an Ubuntu VPS with us. You can simply ask our support team to install Dotclear on Ubuntu 18.04 for you. They are available 24/7 and will be able to help you with the installation.

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