Serendipity is an open-source and lightweight content management system (CMS) for blogging that is easy to use and extendable. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the installation process of Serendipity on the latest version of EndeavourOS.
Before we begin, you must have a few requirements:
It is recommended to keep your system up-to-date before installing any new software. To update your EndeavourOS system, open the terminal and run the following commands:
sudo pacman -Syu
Type your user password and let the system update all the packages.
Serendipity requires a web server with PHP support to function correctly. In this guide, we will use the Apache web server with PHP version 7.4.
To install Apache and PHP, run the following command in the terminal:
sudo pacman -S apache php php-apache
After the installation completes, start the Apache service and enable it to run at system boot time:
sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd
Serendipity stores its data in a database. For this, we will use MariaDB, a community-developed fork of MySQL.
To install MariaDB, run the following command:
sudo pacman -S mariadb
After the installation finishes, start the MariaDB service and enable it to run at system boot:
sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable mariadb
Now, secure the MariaDB installation. To do this, run the following command and follow the prompts:
sudo mysql_secure_installation
Now that we have installed the necessary components, we need to create a database for Serendipity. To do this, open the MySQL command-line client by running the following command:
sudo mysql -u root -p
Enter your root password and hit Enter.
Now, create a new database, user, and grant privileges:
CREATE DATABASE serendipitydb;
CREATE USER 'serendipity'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON serendipitydb.* TO 'serendipity'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;
Replace your_password with a strong password.
Now, we will download and install the latest version of Serendipity. To do this, run the following commands:
sudo pacman -S git
cd /var/www/html/
sudo git clone https://github.com/s9y/Serendipity.git
sudo chown -R http:http /var/www/html/Serendipity/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/Serendipity/
To configure Serendipity, we need to copy the sample configuration file and make some changes. Run the following command to do so:
sudo cp /var/www/html/Serendipity/include/serendipity_config.inc.php.dist /var/www/html/Serendipity/include/serendipity_config.inc.php
Open the newly created file in your favorite text editor:
sudo nano /var/www/html/Serendipity/include/serendipity_config.inc.php
Find the following lines:
$serendipity['dbName'] = '';
$serendipity['dbPrefix'] = '';
$serendipity['dbUser'] = '';
$serendipity['dbPass'] = '';
Replace them with:
$serendipity['dbName'] = 'serendipitydb';
$serendipity['dbPrefix'] = '';
$serendipity['dbUser'] = 'serendipity';
$serendipity['dbPass'] = 'your_password';
Save and close the file.
To configure Apache to serve Serendipity, we need to create a new virtual host file. Run the following command:
sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/extra/serendipity.conf
Add the following code to the file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/Serendipity
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/serendipity_error.log
CustomLog /var/log/httpd/serendipity_access.log combined
<Directory /var/www/html/Serendipity>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Replace example.com with your domain name or IP address. Save and close the file.
Now, enable and restart the Apache service:
sudo systemctl enable httpd
sudo systemctl restart httpd
You're all set! Open your web browser and type http://example.com/ or your IP address in the address bar. You should see the Serendipity installation page.
Follow the on-screen instructions and complete the installation.
In this guide, we have learned how to install Serendipity on the latest version of EndeavourOS. With Serendipity installed, you can now start creating and managing your own blog.
If you want to self-host in an easy, hands free way, need an external IP address, or simply want your data in your own hands, give IPv6.rs a try!
