Install Statamic on Ubuntu: A Step-by-Step Guide

Statamic is a fast, responsive, flat-file content management system (CMS) that helps you build better, easy-to-maintain websites. All its content is stored in text files instead of a database. As a result, it offers features that may not be available to other PHP-based CMS, like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal.

For one, it doesn’t need a database server; call it database-less CMS. Its browser-based dashboard offers an intuitive way of managing your sites. Configure system settings, upload images or write a blog post using a clean and responsive user interface.

Statamic is designed to rapidly scaffold sites, eliminate repetitive tasks (like clicking around in a control panel for hours), and structure your data on the fly.

For more about Statamic, please check its homepage.

This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to install Statamic on Ubuntu 16.04 / 18.10 / 18.04 LTS with Nginx and PHP 7.2-FPM support.

When you’re ready to get Statamic working, continue with the steps below:

Install Nginx HTTP Server on Ubuntu

Nginx HTTP Server is probably the second most popular web server, so install it since Statamic needs it.

To install Nginx HTTP on the 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 the 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 the Nginx setup, open your browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address. You should see the Nginx default test page, as shown below. When you see that, then Nginx is working as expected.

http://localhost

Install PHP 7.2-FPM and Related Modules

PHP 7.2-FPM may not be available in Ubuntu default repositories for some systems. So, You will have to get it from third-party repositories if needed.

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-FPM and related modules.

sudo apt install php7.2-fpm php7.2-common php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-sqlite3 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 Nginx’s PHP default config file.

sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini

Then, save the changes on the following lines below in the file. The value below is an excellent setting to apply in your environment.

file_uploads = On
allow_url_fopen = On
memory_limit = 256M
cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0
upload_max_filesize = 100M
max_execution_time = 360
date.timezone = America/Chicago

After making the change above, please save the file and close it.

After installing PHP and related modules, you must restart Nginx to reload PHP configurations.

To restart Nginx, run the commands below

sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

Download Statamic Latest Release

To get Statamic latest release, you may use the GitHub repository. Install Composer, Curl, and other dependencies to get started.

sudo apt install curl git
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

After installing curl and Composer above, change into the Nginx root directory and download Statamic packages from Github.

cd /var/www/html
sudo composer global require statamic/cli
sudo ~/.composer/vendor/bin/statamic new statamic

During the installation, you should be prompted to create an admin account. Follow the guide below to create one.

Checking for the latest version. [✔] 2.10.5
Downloading. [✔] From cache
Extracting zip. [✔]
Cleaning up. [✔]
Updating file permissions. [✔]
Create a user? (yes/no) [no]: yes

 Username:
 > admin

 Password (Your input will be hidden):
 > 

 Email address []:
 > [email protected]

 First Name []:
 > Admin

 Last Name []:
 > User

 Super user (yes/no) [no]:
 > yes

User created [✔]

[✔] Statamic has been installed into the statamic directory.

Next, create a .htaccess file from the sample file in the root directory.

sudo cp /var/www/html/statamic/sample.htaccess /var/www/html/statamic/.htaccess

After that, run the commands below to set the correct permissions for Statamic to function correctly.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/statamic/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/statamic/

Configure Nginx Statamic Site

Finally, configure the Nginx configuration file for Statamic. This file will control how users access Statamic content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called statamic

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/statamic

Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save it. Replace the highlighted line with your domain name and directory root location.

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    root /var/www/html/statamic;
    index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;

     client_max_body_size 100M;

     autoindex off;

     location / {
        rewrite ^/admin.php.*$ /admin.php;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
      }

    location ~ \.php$ {
         include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
         fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
         fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
         include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Save the file and exit.

After configuring the VirtualHost above, please enable it by running the commands below.

Enable the Statamic Site and Rewrite Module

After configuring the VirtualHost above, please enable it by running the commands below, then restart the Nginx server.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/statamic /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Restart Nginx

sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

Next, open your browser and browse the server hostname or IP address. You should see the Statamic page. Login and change your password.

http://example.com

Statamic is a databaseless flat file content management system. Its structure allowed you to have just the amount of functionality needed in a flat file CMS solution, adding extensions (blade packs) for additional functionality while allowing setup on simple servers with no database.

To upgrade, run the commands below:

sudo ~/.composer/vendor/bin/statamic update

You should see the message below if you’re running the latest.

Determining the latest version of Statamic.
Latest version is 2.10.5

[LogicException]
You are already on Statamic 2.10.5

You can also run the commands below to upgrade:

But, first, change into the statamic folder with the newest one.

cd /var/www/html/statamic

Then run PHP. update: housekeeping to perform any additional tasks that the updater would have taken care of automatically.

sudo php update:housekeeping

Next, run PHP update addons if you have any addons installed.

sudo php update:addons

That’s it!

Comments

James

February 15, 2019

Hello,
Great article! Helped so much already.. couple questions.

I’ve seen around the web that using htaccess in an nginx environment is wrong, I know little to nothing about any of this but could you shed some light on the matter for me? Why do you use it? See this page on the nginx site for reference: https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/examples/likeapache-htaccess/
My understandings that the statamic provided .htaccess file was for an apache environment, whilst the nginx.conf they also supply is for an nginx one.

I’m new to this. It surely shows.

Thanks!