How to Install Attendize on Debian 9

Attendize is an open source ticket selling and event management platform based on the Laravel PHP Framework. Attendize source code is publicly hosted on Github. This guide will show you how to install Attendize on a fresh Debian 9 Vultr instance.

Requirements

• Nginx
• MariaDB
• PHP version 7.1.3 or greater with the following extensions:
  • OpenSSL
  • PDO
  • Mbstring
  • Tokenizer
  • Fileinfo
  • GD

Before you begin

Check the Debian version.

lsb_release -ds
# Debian GNU/Linux 9.5 (stretch)

Ensure that your system is up to date.

apt update && apt upgrade -y

Install git, unzip, curl and sudo packages.

apt install -y git unzip curl sudo 

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

adduser johndoe --gecos "John Doe"
usermod -aG sudo johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Set up the timezone.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Install PHP

Add the PHP 7.2 repository to your system.

sudo apt install -y apt-transport-https lsb-release ca-certificates
sudo wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg
echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list
sudo apt update

Install PHP, as well as the necessary PHP extensions.

sudo apt install -y php7.2 php7.2-cli php7.2-fpm php7.2-common php7.2-mysql php7.2-curl php7.2-json php7.2-zip php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-mbstring php7.2-opcache php7.2-pgsql

Check the version.

php --version

# PHP 7.2.9-1+0~20180901081133.4+stretch~1.gbpdaac35 (cli) (built: Sep  1 2018 08:11:34) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
#     with Zend OPcache v7.2.9-1+0~20180901081133.4+stretch~1.gbpdaac35, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

Install MariaDB and create a database

Install MariaDB.

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server

Check the version.

mysql --version && sudo mysqld --version

# mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.1.26-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2
# mysqld  Ver 10.1.26-MariaDB-0+deb9u1 for debian-linux-gnu on x86_64 (Debian 9.1)

Run mysql_secure installation to improve security and set the password for the MariaDB root user.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD plugin? N
Please set the password for root here.
New password: **********************
Re-enter new password: **********************
Remove anonymous users? Y
Disallow root login remotely? Y
Remove test database and access to it? Y
Reload privilege tables now? Y

Success.

All done!

Log into MariaDB as the root user.

sudo mysql -u root -p
# Enter password

Create a database and user that you will use for your installation of Attendize, and remember the credentials.

CREATE DATABASE dbname;
GRANT ALL ON dbname.* TO 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit

Install and configure Nginx

Install Nginx.

sudo apt install -y nginx

Check the version.

sudo nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.10.3

Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/attendize.conf and populate the file with the following configuration.

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    server_name example.com; # Check this
    root /var/www/attendize/public; # Check this

    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ /.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock; # Check this
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

Activate the new attendize.conf configuration by linking the file to the sites-enabled directory.

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/attendize.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Test the configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Install Composer

Install Composer globally.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '544e09ee996cdf60ece3804abc52599c22b1f40f4323403c44d44fdfdd586475ca9813a858088ffbc1f233e9b180f061') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"
php composer-setup.php
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Check the version.

composer --version
# Composer version 1.7.2 2018-08-16 16:57:12

Install Attendize

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/attendize

Change ownership of the /var/www/attendize directory to johndoe.

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

Navigate to the document root directory.

cd /var/www/attendize

Download the latest release of Attendize and unzip it.

wget https://github.com/Attendize/Attendize/archive/v1.1.1.zip
unzip v1.1.1.zip
rm v1.1.1.zip
mv Attendize-1.1.1/* . && mv Attendize-1.1.1/.* .
rmdir Attendize-1.1.1

Make a copy of the environment configuration file.

cp .env.example .env

Run Composer to install the various libraries.

composer install

NOTE: If your system has less than 2GB memory, you may run into errors when running composer install. To overcome this, configure a larger amount of swap memory.

Generate an application key.

php artisan key:generate

Change ownership of the /var/www/attendize directory to www-data.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/attendize

Navigate to http://example.com/install and you will see the installer screen.

After following the on-screen instructions, Attendize will be installed.