Vanilla Forums is an open-source forum software that can be used to create online communities. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to install Vanilla Forums on Kali Linux Latest.
Before installing Vanilla Forums, you need to have the following:
If you don’t have a web server already installed on your Kali Linux server, you can install Apache by running the following command:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apache2
You also need to install PHP 7.2 or higher as Vanilla Forums requires it. To install PHP, you can run the following command:
sudo apt-get install php7.2 php7.2-cli php7.2-common php7.2-curl php7.2-gd php7.2-json php7.2-mbstring php7.2-mysql php7.2-xml php7.2-zip
Vanilla Forums requires a database to store forum data. You can either choose to install MySQL or MariaDB. To install MySQL, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
To install MariaDB, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install mariadb-server
Once you have installed the database server of your choice, you need to create a new database and user for Vanilla Forums. To create a new database and user in MySQL, you can run:
sudo mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE vanilla_db;
CREATE USER 'vanilla_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON vanilla_db.* TO 'vanilla_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit
In the above command, replace vanilla_user and password with your desired username and password.
To download Vanilla Forums, you can run the following command:
wget https://open.vanillaforums.com/get/vanilla-core.zip
Once the download is complete, extract the zip file by running:
unzip vanilla-core.zip
Move the extracted files to your web folder. In case you have previously configured Apache, the web folder should be located in the following path:
/var/www/html/
To configure Vanilla Forums, you need to edit the conf/config.php file in the Vanilla Forums directory. Open the file and update the following values:
$Configuration['Database']['Host'] = 'localhost';
$Configuration['Database']['Name'] = 'vanilla_db';
$Configuration['Database']['User'] = 'vanilla_user';
$Configuration['Database']['Password'] = 'password';
Replace the values with your own database and user configuration.
To make sure the Vanilla Forums can write to the required folders, you need to set the correct folder permissions. To do this, run the following command:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/vanilla/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/vanilla/
If you are using Apache as your web server, you can create a virtual host configuration that directs traffic to Vanilla Forums. To create a new virtual host, create a new file called vanilla.conf in the /etc/apache2/sites-available/ directory by running:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/vanilla.conf
Add the following lines to the file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName myforum.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/vanilla/
<Directory /var/www/html/vanilla/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Make sure you replace myforum.com with your own domain name.
To enable the new virtual host configuration you just created, you need to run the following commands:
sudo a2ensite vanilla.conf
sudo systemctl restart apache2
After the restart, your Vanilla Forums installation should be accessible at your designated domain name.
You can complete the setup process by following the installation wizard that will prompt you to create your own account and customize the forum.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Vanilla Forums on Kali Linux Latest.
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