How to Install SilverStripe on nixOS Latest

SilverStripe is an intuitive, open-source content management system that helps you manage your website and digital content with ease. NixOS is a Linux-based operating system that is known for its robustness and package management.

In this tutorial, we will walk through the steps necessary to install SilverStripe on nixOS Latest.

Step 1: Install Nix Package Manager

Before we can install SilverStripe, we need to ensure that nix package manager is installed on the system. If it is not installed, we can install it using the command below:

$ curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh

Step 2: Create a SilverStripe Environment

We will create a SilverStripe environment by creating a nix shell. This ensures that all dependencies required by SilverStripe are installed and available to the application.

To create the environment, navigate to the directory where you want to install SilverStripe and create a shell.nix file with the following contents:

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:

pkgs.mkShell {
  buildInputs = with pkgs; [
    php
    php-composer
    nginx
    mysql
  ];
}

This configuration file declares the dependencies needed to run SilverStripe, including PHP, composer, nginx, and MySQL.

Once the configuration file is in place, run the following command to create a nix shell:

$ nix-shell

Step 3: Install SilverStripe with Composer

Finally, we are ready to install SilverStripe using composer. Composer is a package manager for PHP and is used to manage the installation and updates of SilverStripe.

To install SilverStripe, run the following command:

$ composer create-project silverstripe/installer /var/www/silverstripe

This command will create a new SilverStripe project in the /var/www/silverstripe directory. You can change this location if you prefer a different location.

Step 4: Configure Nginx and PHP-FPM

We need to configure our web server and PHP FastCGI Process Manager (PHP-FPM) to enable our SilverStripe application to communicate with the server.

First, open your Nginx configuration file (/etc/nginx/nginx.conf) and add the following server block:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  your-domain.com;
    root /var/www/silverstripe/public;

    index index.html index.htm index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri /framework/main.php?url=$uri;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Replace your-domain.com with your website's domain name.

Next, open your PHP-FPM configuration file (/etc/php-fpm.conf) and add the following configuration block:

[www]
listen = /run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock
user = http
group = http

Then, start the services for nginx and php-fpm and set them to start at boot:

# Start and enable nginx
$ sudo systemctl start nginx
$ sudo systemctl enable nginx

# Start and enable php-fpm
$ sudo systemctl start php-fpm
$ sudo systemctl enable php-fpm

Step 5: Access Your SilverStripe Installation

Visit http://your-domain.com in your web browser, and you should see the SilverStripe installation screen. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation of SilverStripe.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed SilverStripe on nixOS Latest!

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