Install Concrete5 on Ubuntu 16.04

We’ll show you, how to install Concrete5 on Ubuntu 16.04. Concrete5 is free and open source Content Management System (CMS). It is an easy to use, but yet powerful tool allowing users with no technical skills to build different types of websites. Concrete5 features in-context editing (the ability to edit website content directly on the page, rather than in an administrative interface or using web editor software). Installing Concrete5 on Ubuntu 16.04, is fairly easy and should not take more then 10 minutes to install it.

Concrete5 comes with tons of useful features such as:

– Intuitive Editing
– Powerful and Extendable
– Mobile Optimized & Responsive
– Modular Building & Templates
– Create Forms and Collect Data
– Integrated Reporting
– Beautiful Blog
– Great Discussions
– Users and Permissions
– Content Workflow
– SEO Enabled
– Social Media
– and many more…

In this tutorial we will install Concrete5 on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS with Apache web serevr, PHP and MySQL.

1. Update the system

Before starting, it is recommended to update all packages on your server to the latest version. Login to your Ubuntu 16.04 server via SSH

ssh root@IP_Adress -p Port_number

and run the following command to update the packages

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

2. Install Apache web server

Apache can be easily installed with the following command

apt-get install apache2

Once the web server is installed, enable it to start automatically upon system boot

systemctl enable apache2

3. Install PHP 7

Concrete5 is a PHP based application, so we have to install PHP on our Ubuntu 16.04 VPS. Do do that, run the following command

apt-get install php7.0 libapache2-mod-php7.0 php7.0-mysql

4. Install MySQL server

Run the following command to install MySQL database server on your VPS

apt-get install mysql-server

After the installation is complete, run the ‘mysql_secure_installation’ script to set the MySQL root password and secure the server.

5. Create MySQL Database

Next, login to the MySQL server as user root and create a new database and user for Concrete5

mysql -u root -p

mysql> CREATE DATABASE concrete5;
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON concrete5.* TO 'concrete5usr'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit

Don’t forget to replace ‘PASSWORD’ with an actual strong password.

6. Download and Install Concrete5

Go to Concrete5’s official website and download the latest stable version of the application to your server. At the moment of writing this article it is version 8.3.1.

cd /var/www/html
wget https://www.concrete5.org/download_file/-/view/99963/ -O concrete5.zip
unzip concrete5.zip
mv concrete5-8.3.1/ concrete5

Give proper permission to the concrete5 directory:

chown -R www-data:www-data concrete5/

7. Configure Apache for Concrete5

Next, we will create Apache virtual host directive for the Concrete5 domain.

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/concrete5.conf

ServerAdmin admin@your-domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/concrete5/
ServerName your-domain.com
<Directory /var/www/html/concrete5/>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
ErrorLog logs/your-domain.com-error_log
CustomLog logs/your-domain.com-access_log common

Save the file, and run the following command to enable the virtual host directive

a2ensite concrete5

8. Restart Web Server

and restart the web server for the changes to take effect

systemctl restart apache2

That’s all if you closely followed all instructions in this tutorial, you should be able to access the Concrete5 installation at http://your-domain.com and complete the installation process.

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Of course you don’t have to install Concrete5 on Ubuntu 16.04, if you use one of our concrete5 hosting in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install Concrete5 on Ubuntu 16.04 for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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