Scripts on Scripts: OctoberCMS Get Up & Go Guide

OctoberCMS is a neat project for creating online content, written in PHP. I recently had to restart some projects I made with it on a new laptop, so I've made this post basically so I don't have to remember the steps all over again.

Below are some instructions (mainly just for myself) on getting up and running with OctoberCMS on a local machine. This assumes you are using a recent version of Ubuntu and have LAMP installed already.

Create an empty MySQL database

Enter these MySQL commands:
create database test_october1;
create user oct_user@localhost identified by 'enter_password_here';
use test_october1;
grant all on test_october1.* to oct_user@localhost;
flush privileges;

Install required PHP packages:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install php php-ctype php-curl php-xml php-fileinfo php-gd php-json php-mbstring php-mysql php-sqlite3

Download the OctoberCMS installer file

The local web directory I'm going to be using is just:
/home/scott/ws/php/october_projects/toct1

In a browser, go to octobercms.com/download
Unzip the install-master.zip file
Then copy its contents to your web directory, e.g.:
cp -r /home/scott/Downloads/octobercms/install-master/* .

Set directory permissions:
chown scott:www-data -R october_projects/;
chmod 770 -R october_projects

Set up a virtualhost for the OctoberCMS site using Apache

mkdir /etc/apache2/logging/;
chown -R www-data:www-data /etc/apache2/logging/;
chmod 770 -R /etc/apache2/logging/;

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/;
nano testoct.localhost.conf

Type this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin username@abcs.co.nz
DocumentRoot "/home/scott/ws/php/october_projects/toct1"
ServerName testoct.localhost
ServerAlias www.testoct.localhost
<Directory "/home/scott/ws/php/october_projects/toct1">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog "logging/testoct-error.log"
CustomLog "logging/testoct-access.log" common
</VirtualHost>

sudo a2ensite testoct.localhost;
sudo systemctl reload apache2;

sudo nano /etc/hosts

Enter this:
127.0.0.1 testoct.localhost

Run the Install wizard

In a browser, test this by going to:
http://testoct.localhost/install.php

This will start an install wizard
- you will see a checks screen. If all is OK, push Continue

- Enter the database details and set up the administrator credentials. Continue

- On the last step, click Start from scratch. This will create an empty installation with a simple demo theme.

You can see a demo page at:

http://testoct.localhost

Go to the admin section:
http://testoct.localhost/backend
-log in
-if you get an error trying to go to the admin page, you might need to enable mode_rewrite for Apache:
sudo a2enmod rewrite