When you’re looking for a true open source, flat-file content management systems to power your website or blog, you should look at Bludit CMS. The steps below are how I got Bludit CMS installed on Ubuntu 16.04 / 17.10 and 18.04.
Bludit is an open-source flat-file CMS with slick admin interface and gaining a lot of attention. It offers features that may not be available to other PHP based content management systems, like WordPress Joomla or Drupal.
For one, it doesn’t need a database server to function. it’s a flat-file CMS. It also provides native markdown WYSIWYG support, SEO friendly, flexible CSS framework and easily installation and management.
This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to install Bludit CMS on Ubuntu 16.04 / 17.10 and 18.04 LTS with Nginx, PHP 7.2 support and Let’s Encrypt free SSL/TLS certificates enabled.
When you’re ready to get Bludit working, continue with the steps below:
Step 1: Install Nginx HTTP Server on Ubuntu
Nginx HTTP Server is the second most popular web server in use. so install it, since Bludit needs it.
To install Nginx HTTP on Ubuntu server, run the commands below.
sudo apt update sudo apt install nginx
After installing Nginx, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable Nginx service to always start up with the server boots.
sudo systemctl stop nginx.service sudo systemctl start nginx.service sudo systemctl enable nginx.service
To test Nginx setup, open your browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address and you should see Nginx default test page as shown below. When you see that, then Nginx is working as expected.
http://localhost
Step 2: Install PHP 7.2-FPM and Related Modules
PHP 7.2 isn’t available on Ubuntu default repositories. in order to install it, you will have to get it from third-party repositories.
Run the commands below to add the below third-party repository to upgrade to PHP 7.2-FPM
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.2-FPM
sudo apt update
Next, run the commands below to install PHP 7.2 and related modules.
sudo apt install php7.2-fpm php7.2-common php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-soap php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-cli php7.2-curl php7.2-zip
After installing PHP 7.2, run the commands below to open PHP default config file for Nginx.
sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
Then make the changes on the following lines below in the file and save. The value below are great settings to apply in your environments.
file_uploads = On allow_url_fopen = On memory_limit = 256M upload_max_filesize = 100M cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0 max_execution_time = 360 date.timezone = America/Chicago
After making the change above, save the file and close out.
Step 3: Restart Nginx
After installing PHP and related modules, all you have to do is restart Nginx to reload PHP configurations.
To restart Nginx, run the commands below
sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
Step 4: Download Bludit Latest Release
Next, visit Bludit site and download the latest package. or run the commands below to download and extract Bludit content.
After downloading, run the commands below to extract the downloaded file and move it into a new Bludit root directory.
cd /tmp && wget https://df6m0u2ovo2fu.cloudfront.net/builds/bludit-2-3-3.zip unzip bludit-2-3-3.zip sudo mv bludit-2-3-3 /var/www/html/bludit
Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for Bludit to function properly.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/bludit/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/bludit/
Step 5: Configure Nginx Bludit Site
Finally, configure Nginx configuration file for Bludit. This file will control how users’ access Bludit content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called bludit
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/bludit
Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the highlighted line with your own domain name and directory root location.
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
root /var/www/html/bludit;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
client_max_body_size 100M;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
Save the file and exit.
After configuring the Virtual Host above, enable it by running the commands below
Step 6: Enable the Bludit Site
After configuring the Virtual Host above, enable it by running the commands below, then restart Nginx server.
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/bludit /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
Step 7: Install Let’s Encrypt Client
To get Let’s Encrypt free SSL/TLS certificates on your Ubuntu machine, you should first install its client. The client helps automate the process for you. To install it, run the commands below.
sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
If python-certbot-nginx isn’t already installed, you may have to add its PPA repository and install the package.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install python-certbot-nginx
Step 8: Obtaining your free SSL/TLS Certificates
After installing Let’s Encrypt Certbot client module for Nginx, run the commands below to obtain your free Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS certificate the domain specified. make sure to replace example.com with your own domain.
sudo certbot --nginx -m admin@example.com -d example.com -d www.example.com
After running the above commands, you should get prompted to accept the licensing terms. If everything is checked, the client should automatically install the free SSL/TLS certificate and configure the Nginx site to use the certs.
Please read the Terms of Service at
https://letsencrypt.org/documents/LE-SA-v1.2-November-15-2017.pdf. You must
agree in order to register with the ACME server at
https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(A)gree/(C)ancel: A
Choose Yes ( Y ) to share your email address
Would you be willing to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, a founding partner of the Let's Encrypt project and the non-profit
organization that develops Certbot? We'd like to send you email about EFF and
our work to encrypt the web, protect its users and defend digital rights.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Y)es/(N)o: Y
This is how easy is it to obtain your free SSL/TLS certificate for your Nginx powered website.
Please choose whether or not to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS, removing HTTP access. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1: No redirect - Make no further changes to the webserver configuration. 2: Redirect - Make all requests redirect to secure HTTPS access. Choose this for new sites, or if you're confident your site works on HTTPS. You can undo this change by editing your web server's configuration. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Select the appropriate number [1-2] then [enter] (press 'c' to cancel): 2
Pick option 2 to redirect all traffic over HTTPS. This is important!
After that, the SSL client should install the cert and configure your website to redirect all traffic over HTTPS.
Congratulations! You have successfully enabled https://example.com and https://www.example.com You should test your configuration at: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=example.com https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.example.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT NOTES: - Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem Your key file has been saved at: /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem Your cert will expire on 2018-02-24. To obtain a new or tweaked version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot again with the "certonly" option. To non-interactively renew *all* of your certificates, run "certbot renew" - If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by: Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/donate Donating to EFF: https://eff.org/donate-le
The highlighted code block should be added to your Nginx Bludit configuration file automatically by Let’s Encrypt certbot. Your Bludit site is ready to be used over HTTPS.
server {
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
root /var/www/html/bludit;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
client_max_body_size 100M;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
if ($scheme != "https") {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} # managed by Certbot
# Redirect non-https traffic to https
# if ($scheme != "https") {
# return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
# } # managed by Certbot
}
You’ll have to manually renew the certificates. You’ll get email reminder to reset when the certificates are about to expire. To test the renewal process run the commands below.
sudo certbot renew --dry-run
To setup a process to automatically renew the certificates, add a cron job to execute the renewal process.
sudo crontab -e
Then add the line below and save.
0 1 * * * /usr/bin/certbot renew & > /dev/null
The cron job will attempt to renew 30 days before expiring
After that, open your browser and browse to your domain name to launch Bludit configuration wizard.
You should see Bludit setup wizard to complete. Please follow the wizard carefully.
https://example.com
You should see Bludit installer wizard to choose your language. when you’re done, click Next.
Create the admin account and logon to manage the site. and click Install to finish the installation
Enjoy!
