OSSN (Open Source Social Network) is a free and open-source social networking software written in PHP. In this tutorial, we are going to learn how to install OSSN on POP! OS, one of the popular Linux distributions.
Before installing OSSN on POP! OS, make sure you have the following prerequisites:
First, visit the official website https://www.opensource-socialnetwork.org/ and download the latest version of OSSN:
wget https://github.com/opensource-socialnetwork/opensource-socialnetwork/archive/v7.3.zip -O ossn.zip
The above command will download the latest version of OSSN and save it to the ossn.zip file.
Next, extract the downloaded file using the unzip utility. If it is not already installed on your POP! OS system, then install it using the following command:
sudo apt install unzip
After installing the unzip utility, extract the ossn.zip file using the below command:
sudo unzip ossn.zip -d /var/www/html/
The above command will extract the OSSN files to the /var/www/html/opensource-socialnetwork-7.3 directory.
Once the extraction is completed, navigate to the extracted directory using the below command:
cd /var/www/html/opensource-socialnetwork-7.3
Then copy the sample configuration file to ossn.config.php using the following command:
cp ./framework/ossn.config.example.php ./framework/ossn.config.php
Edit the ossn.config.php file and configure the database connection details like below:
$config = array(
'dbuser' => '<database_user>',
'dbpwd' => '<database_password>',
'dbhost' => '<database_host>',
'dbname' => '<database_name>',
);
Save and close the file.
Next, you need to give the web server (Apache) write permissions on the ./ossn_data and ./cache directories using the below command:
sudo chown www-data:www-data ./ossn_data ./cache
Once all the configurations have been set up, restart the Apache service using the following command:
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Finally, open your favorite web browser and browse to the following URL:
http://<your-ip-address>/opensource-socialnetwork-7.3
You will see the OSSN Install Page as shown below:
Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the OSSN installation process.
That's it! You have successfully installed OSSN on your POP! OS system. You can now start building your own social network website.
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