Contao is an open source content management system that allows users to create and manage websites with ease. This tutorial will guide you through the process of installing Contao on Linux Mint.
Before you begin, you should have the following:
Before installing any new software, you should update the system to ensure that all packages are up to date.
To update the system, open a terminal window and run the following commands:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Contao requires a web server to be installed on the system. Apache is the most popular web server software available.
To install Apache, run the following command in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install apache2
After the installation is complete, start the Apache service:
sudo systemctl start apache2
To make sure that the service starts at boot time, run the following command:
sudo systemctl enable apache2
Contao requires a database to store its data. MariaDB is a popular database management system that is fully compatible with MySQL.
To install MariaDB, run the following command in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client
After the installation is complete, start the MariaDB service:
sudo systemctl start mariadb
To make sure that the service starts at boot time, run the following command:
sudo systemctl enable mariadb
During the installation process, you will be prompted to set a root password for the MariaDB server. Make sure to set a strong password and keep it safe.
Before installing Contao, you need to create a new database for it.
To do this, open a terminal window and log in to the MariaDB server as the root user:
sudo mysql -u root -p
Enter the root password that you set during the installation process.
Next, create a new database for Contao:
CREATE DATABASE contao;
Create a new user for the database and grant them full access to the contao database:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON contao.* TO 'contao_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
Replace password with a strong password of your choice.
Finally, flush the privileges and exit the MariaDB shell:
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
Contao is built using PHP, so you will need to install PHP on your system.
To install PHP, run the following command in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql
This command will also install the PHP MySQL extension which is required to connect to the MariaDB server.
Visit the Contao website and download the latest version of the software.
https://contao.org/en/download.html
Save the downloaded file to a folder in your home directory, such as ~/Downloads.
Next, extract the downloaded file using the following command:
tar -xvzf ~/Downloads/contao-x.x.x.tar.gz -C /var/www/html
Replace x.x.x with the version number of the software that you downloaded.
This command will extract the Contao files to the /var/www/html directory, which is the default document root for the Apache web server on Linux Mint.
After extracting the files, you need to configure Contao. Start by creating a new configuration file:
cd /var/www/html/contao-x.x.x
cp system/config/localconfig.php.sample system/config/localconfig.php
Next, open the localconfig.php file in a text editor:
nano system/config/localconfig.php
Update the following settings in the file:
$GLOBALS['TL_CONFIG']['dbUser'] = 'contao_user';
$GLOBALS['TL_CONFIG']['dbPass'] = 'password';
$GLOBALS['TL_CONFIG']['dbDatabase'] = 'contao';
Replace contao_user and password with the username and password that you created earlier. Also, make sure that the dbDatabase setting points to the correct database name.
For security reasons, you should set the correct file permissions for the Contao files.
To do this, run the following command in the terminal:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/contao-x.x.x
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/contao-x.x.x
These commands will change the ownership of the files to the www-data user, which is the user that Apache runs as on Linux Mint. They will also set the file permissions to 775, which allows the web server to read and write to the files.
After completing the previous steps, you can access Contao by opening a web browser and navigating to http://localhost/contao-x.x.x.
Replace x.x.x with the version number of the software that you downloaded.
You should see the Contao installation page. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation process.
In this tutorial, you learned how to install Contao on Linux Mint. You also learned how to set up Apache, MariaDB, PHP, and file permissions. With these tools in place, you can create and manage your own websites using Contao.
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