Tutorial: Installing Live Helper Chat on Arch Linux

Live Helper Chat is an open-source live chat software for your website. It allows you to communicate with your visitors in real-time and provide support. In this tutorial, we will be installing and configuring Live Helper Chat on Arch Linux.

Prerequisites

Before we get started with the installation, ensure that the following packages are installed on your Arch Linux server:

• Apache
• MySQL/MariaDB
• PHP
• PHP extensions:
  • PDO
  • PDO MySQL/MariaDB
  • OpenSSL
  • Mbstring
  • cURL
  • JSON

Step 1: Download Live Helper Chat

Open a terminal and navigate to the directory where you want to download the software. Use the following command to download the latest stable version of Live Helper Chat:

wget https://github.com/LiveHelperChat/livehelperchat/archive/master.zip

Once the download is complete, extract the ZIP file:

unzip master.zip

Step 2: Move files to the web server directory

Move the extracted files to your web server's document root directory. For example, if your Apache document root is /srv/http/, you can copy the files to the livehelperchat directory:

sudo mv livehelperchat-master /srv/http/livehelperchat

Make sure that the web server has permission to access the files:

sudo chown -R http:http /srv/http/livehelperchat

Step 3: Create a database

Create a database for Live Helper Chat using the following commands:

mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE livehelperchat;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON livehelperchat.* TO livehelperchatuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Replace password with a secure password of your choice.

Step 4: Configure Live Helper Chat

Navigate to the livehelperchat directory:

cd /srv/http/livehelperchat

Copy the example configuration file:

cp settings/settings.ini.default.php settings/settings.ini.php

Edit the file using a text editor of your choice:

nano settings/settings.ini.php

Set the database parameters:

...
'host' => 'localhost',
'user' => 'livehelperchatuser',
'password' => 'password',
'database' => 'livehelperchat',
...

Replace password with the password you set in Step 3.

Step 5: Create a Virtual Host

Create a virtual host configuration file for the Live Helper Chat application:

sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/extra/livehelperchat.conf

Add the following content:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@example.com
    DocumentRoot "/srv/http/livehelperchat"
    ServerName livehelperchat.example.com

    <Directory "/srv/http/livehelperchat">
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    # ErrorLog and CustomLog options are optional
    ErrorLog "/var/log/httpd/livehelperchat-error_log"
    CustomLog "/var/log/httpd/livehelperchat-access_log" combined
</VirtualHost>

Replace example.com with your own domain name.

Save the file and exit.

Step 6: Start the Web Server

Start the Apache web server using the following command:

sudo systemctl start httpd

Step 7: Access Live Helper Chat

Open a web browser and enter the following address in the address bar:

http://livehelperchat.example.com/

Replace example.com with your own domain name.

You should now be able to use the Live Helper Chat application on your website.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have covered how to install and configure Live Helper Chat on Arch Linux. Follow these steps carefully, and you should be able to add a live chat functionality to your website.

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