This tutorial will guide you through the installation process of Vanilla Forums on Ubuntu Server.
Before we begin, you should have the following:
Vanilla Forums require a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack to be installed on the server. Follow the steps below to install the required components.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2
sudo apt install mysql-server
During the installation process, you will be prompted to set a password for the MySQL root user. Remember the password as we will need it later.
sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql
php -v
Create a new Apache virtual host configuration file for Vanilla Forums.
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/vanilla.conf
Add the following code to the file, replacing the domain name or IP address with your own.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName your-domain.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}/vanilla_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/vanilla_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Save and close the file.
Change to the Apache document root directory where we will download Vanilla Forums.
cd /var/www/html
Download the latest version of Vanilla Forums from the official website.
sudo git clone https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla.git
Change the ownership of the vanilla folder to the www-data user and group.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data vanilla/
Create a new MySQL database and user for Vanilla Forums.
mysql -u root -p
Enter the MySQL root password when prompted.
Create a new database for Vanilla Forums.
CREATE DATABASE vanilla_db;
Create a new user and grant access to the database.
CREATE USER 'vanilla_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON vanilla_db.* TO 'vanilla_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Exit from MySQL.
exit;
Open your web browser and navigate to your domain name or IP address. You should see the Vanilla Forums setup page.
Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the setup process. When prompted, enter the following details:
Once the setup is complete, you should see the Vanilla Forums homepage.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Vanilla Forums on your Ubuntu Server. You can now customize your forum, create new categories, and start engaging with your community.
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