How to Install Craft CMS on CentOS 7

Craft CMS is an open source CMS written in PHP. Craft CMS source code is hosted on GitHub. This guide will show you how to install Craft CMS on a fresh CentOS 7 Vultr instance.

Requirements

Server Requirements

PHP 5.3.0 – 7.1.x with safe mode disabled
MySQL 5.1.0 or later, with the InnoDB storage engine installed
A web server (Apache, Nginx, IIS)
A minimum of 32MB of memory allocated to PHP
A minimum of 20MB of free disk space
A minimum of 1MB of database space

Required PHP Extensions

Reflection Extension
PCRE Extension
SPL Extension
PDO Extension
PDO MySQL Extension
Mcrypt Extension
GD Extension with FreeType Support (unless ImageMagick Extension is installed)
OpenSSL Extension
Multibyte String Extension
JSON Extension
cURL
crypt() with BLOWFISH_CRYPT enabled

Optional PHP Extensions

DOM Extension
iconv Extension
ImageMagick Extension
SimpleXML

Before you begin

Check CentOS version.

cat /etc/centos-release
# CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708 (Core)

Create a new non-root user account with sudo access and switch to it.

useradd -c "John Doe" johndoe && passwd johndoe
usermod -aG wheel johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace ‘johndoe’ with your username.
Set up the timezone.

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo yum update -y

Install required and useful packages.

sudo yum install -y wget vim unzip bash-completion

Disable SELinux.

sudo setenforce 0

Step 1 – Install PHP and required PHP extensions

CentOS does not provide the latest PHP version in its default software repositories. You will need to add a Webtatic YUM repo.

sudo yum install -y php71w php71w-cli php71w-fpm php71w-mysql php71w-mcrypt php71w-gd php71w-mbstring php71w-json php71w-curl php71w-xml php71w-common

Check the PHP version.

php --version
# PHP 7.1.14 (cli) (built: Feb  4 2018 09:05:29) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies

Start and enable ‘php-fpm’ service.

sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Step 2 – Install MariaDB and create database

Download and install MariaDB.

sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo
# Copy/paste this to the /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo file
[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = https://yum.mariadb.org/10.2/centos7-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1
sudo yum install -y MariaDB-server MariaDB-client

Check MariaDB version.

mysql --version && mysqld --version
# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.2.13-MariaDB, for Linux (x86_64) using readline 5.1
# mysqld  Ver 10.2.13-MariaDB for Linux on x86_64 (MariaDB Server)

Start and enable MariaDB.

sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

Run the ‘mysql_secure_installation’ script to improve the security of your MariaDB installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:
Create a new MariaDB database and user, and remember the credentials.
create database dbname;
grant all on dbname.* to 'username' identified by 'password';
flush privileges;
Exit MySQL.
exit

Step 3 – Install and configure NGINX

Install NGINX server.

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check NGINX version.

sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.12.2

Start and enable NGINX service.

sudo systemctl start nginx.service
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

Configure NGINX. Run ‘sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/craft.conf’ and copy/paste the following.

server {
  listen [::]:80;
  listen 80;
  server_name example.com;
  root /var/www/craft/public;
  index index.html index.htm index.php;
  charset utf-8;
  location / {
    try_files $uri/index.html $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
  }
  location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
    fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";      
  }
}

Test the NGINX configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload NGINX.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Step 4 – Download and install Craft CMS

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/craft

Change the ownership of the ‘/var/www/craft’ directory to ‘johndoe’.

sudo chown -R johndoe:johndoe /var/www/craft

Navigate to the document root.

cd /var/www/craft

Download the latest stable release of Craft CMS.

wget https://download.craftcdn.com/craft/2.6/2.6.3012/Craft-2.6.3012.zip
Unzip Craft CMS.
unzip Craft-2.6.3012.zip
rm Craft-2.6.3012.zip

Tell Craft how to connect to your database.

vim craft/config/db.php

Change the ownership of the ‘/var/www/scraft’ directory to nginx.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/craft

Run ‘sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf’ and set user and group to nginx. Initially, it will be set to user and group apache.

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
# user = nginx
# group = nginx
Restart php-fpm.service.
sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Now that everything’s set up, point your browser to ‘http://example.com/admin’ and follow the Craft installer.
To access Craft’s administrative interface, append ‘/admin’ to your IP/domain.
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Do let us know if you want to add any specific CMS or Linux topics into this tutorial series.

Updated on December 23, 2018

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