Knowledgebase

Introduction

Subrion is an open-source Content Management System (CMS) with a powerful modern administrator interface, suitable for building personal websites, blogs, and corporate web portals. Subrion ships with a modern API, professional-looking templates, and plug-ins that allow you to extend its functionalities and change the look of your website depending on your needs. This guide explains how to install Subrion CMS with a LAMP stack on your Ubuntu 20.04 server.

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial, you require the following:

• An Ubuntu 20.04 server.
• A non-root user with sudo access.
• A LAMP stack.

1. Install Subrion Dependencies and Helper Packages

Connect to your server via SSH and follow the steps below.

1. Update the package information index.

    $ sudo apt update

2. Install libapache2-mod-php to allow Apache to communicate with PHP.

    $ sudo apt install -y libapache2-mod-php

3. Enable Apache's mod_rewrite module to allow Subrion CMS to craft user-friendly URLs.

    $ sudo a2enmod rewrite

4. Restart your web server to load the new modules.

    $ sudo systemctl restart apache2

5. Download and install the unzip package, which you need to unzip Subrion CMS installation files.

    $ sudo apt -y install unzip

2. Set Up a Database and a User Account

Subrion works with either the MySQL or MariaDB server. Follow the steps below to set up a backend for the CMS.

1. Log in to the MySQL/MariaDB server as root.

    $ sudo mysql -u root -p

2. Enter the root password for your MySQL/MariaDB server and press Enter to proceed. Then, run the appropriate SQL statements depending on the database engine you use. Replace EXAMPLE_PASSWORD with a strong value.

   MySQL server:

    mysql> CREATE DATABASE subrion;
           CREATE USER 'subrion_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'EXAMPLE_PASSWORD';
           GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON subrion.* TO 'subrion_user'@'localhost';           
           FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

   MariaDB server:

    MariaDB> CREATE DATABASE subrion;
             GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on subrion.* TO 'subrion_user'@'localhost' identified by 'EXAMPLE_PASSWORD';
             FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

3. Log out from your database server.

    mysql> EXIT;

3. Download Subrion CMS

You should install Subrion CMS in a separate directory to make maintenance and troubleshooting easier in the future.

1. Create a new subrion directory under the root of your web server.

    $ sudo mkdir -p /var/www/subrion

2. Take ownership of the new /var/www/subrion directory.

    $ sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/subrion

3. Navigate to the new directory.

    $ cd /var/www/subrion

4. Download the latest stable version of the Subrion CMS from the official subrion.org repository.

    $ sudo wget https://tools.subrion.org/get/4.1.5.zip

5. Unzip the 4.1.5.zip file to your current directory.

    $ sudo unzip 4.1.5.zip

6. Change ownership of the /var/www/subrion directory to the www-data user to allow Apache to read/write to the directory.

    $ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/subrion

4. Create Virtual Host

The Apache web server reads virtual hosts configurations from the /etc/apache2/sites-available directory. Therefore, you need to set up a separate file for the Subrion CMS.

1. Disable the default 000-default.conf configuration file.

    $ sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

2. Create a new subrion.conf configuration file.

    $ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/subrion.conf

3. Paste the information below into the new file. Replace example.com with your server's public IP address or domain name.

    <VirtualHost *:80>
   
        ServerName example.com
   
        DocumentRoot "/var/www/subrion"
   
        <Directory "/var/www/subrion">
            Require all granted
            Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
            AllowOverride All
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all
        </Directory>
   
       ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
       CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
   
    </VirtualHost>

4. Save and close the file.

5. Add the new subrion.conf to the list of enabled sites.

    $ sudo a2ensite subrion.conf

6. Restart the web server to load the new configurations.

    $ sudo systemctl restart apache2

5. Test Subrion Installation

1. Visit the address http://example.com in a web browser. Replace example.com with your domain name or public IP address of your server.

2. Follow the web-based wizard to complete installing Subrion CMS.

3. Delete the installation script and secure the config.inc.php file for security purposes.

    $ sudo rm /var/www/subrion/install/modules/module.install.php
    $ sudo chmod 400 /var/www/subrion/includes/config.inc.php 

4. Append /panel to your server's public IP address or domain name to access the administration panel. For instance, http://example.com/panel.

Conclusion

In this guide, you've installed the Subrion CMS with LAMP stack on your Ubuntu 20.04 server. For more information on configuring your Subrion CMS, follow the link below.

• Subrion CMS documentation