Installing Bolt CMS on Fedora 28

Bolt is an open source CMS written in PHP. Bolt’s source code is hosted on GitHub. This guide will show you how to install Bolt CMS on a fresh Fedora 28 Vultr instance.

Requirements

• PHP 5.5.9 or higher.
• The following common PHP extensions:
  • pdo
  • mysqlnd (to use MySQL as a database)
  • pgsql (to use PostgreSQL as a database)
  • openssl
  • curl
  • gd
  • intl (optional but recommended)
  • json
  • mbstring (optional but recommended)
  • opcache (optional but recommended)
  • posix
  • xml
  • fileinfo
  • exif
  • zip
• A minimum of 32MB of memory allocated to PHP.
• SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL database.
• Nginx or Apache with mod_rewrite enabled.

Before you begin

Check OS version.

cat /etc/fedora-release
# Fedora release 28 (Twenty Eight)

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

useradd -c "John Doe" johndoe && passwd johndoe
usermod -aG wheel johndoe
su - johndoe

NOTE: Replace johndoe with your username.

Ensure that your system is up to date.

sudo dnf check-upgrade || sudo dnf upgrade -y

Set up the timezone.

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Install required and useful packages.

sudo dnf install -y wget vim unzip bash-completion git

For simplicity, disable SELinux and Firewall.

sudo setenforce 0; sudo systemctl stop firewalld; sudo systemctl disable firewalld

Install PHP, required PHP extensions, MySQL/MariaDB and Nginx

Install PHP and required PHP extensions.

sudo dnf install -y php-cli php-fpm php-mbstring php-zip php-mysqlnd php-pgsql php-sqlite3 php-curl php-simplexml php-common php-gd php-intl php-json php-opcache php-xml php-zip php-common php-process

Check the PHP version.

php --version
# PHP 7.2.6 (cli) (built: May 22 2018 16:22:08) ( NTS )

Start and enable PHP-FPM service.

sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Download and install MariaDB.

sudo dnf install -y mariadb-server

Check the MariaDB version.

mysql --version

Start and enable the MariaDB service.

sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
sudo systemctl start mariadb.service

Run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your MariaDB installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Log into MariaDB as the root user.

mysql -u root -p
# Enter password:

Create a new MariaDB database and user, and remember the credentials.

create database dbname;
grant all on dbname.* to 'username' identified by 'password';
flush privileges;

Exit MySQL.

exit

Install Nginx.

sudo dnf install -y nginx

Check the Nginx version.

nginx -v

Start and enable Nginx.

sudo systemctl enable nginx.service
sudo systemctl start nginx.service

Configure Nginx

Run sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/bolt.conf and populate it with the following text.

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

  server_name example.com;

  index index.php index.html;
  root /var/www/bolt/public;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
  }

  location ~ [^/]/.php(/|$) {
    try_files /index.php =404;
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?/.php)(/.*)$;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";
    fastcgi_param HTTPS $https if_not_empty;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/www.sock;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
  }
}

Test the Nginx configuration.

sudo nginx -t

Reload Nginx.

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Download and install Bolt CMS

Create a document root directory.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/bolt

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

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

Navigate to the document root.

cd /var/www/bolt

Download the latest stable release of Bolt CMS from the command line.

wget https://bolt.cm/distribution/bolt-latest.zip

Unzip Bolt CMS, remove the downloaded zip file and move the Bolt CMS files and directories to /var/www/bolt.

unzip bolt-latest.zip
rm bolt-latest.zip
mv bolt-v3.5.3/* bolt-v3.5.3/.* .  # Just press enter on warning
rmdir bolt-v3.5.3/

NOTE: If there is a newer version, you should update Bolt version numbers.

To finish the installation, you will need to rename the following files:

mv .bolt.yml.dist .bolt.yml
mv composer.json.dist composer.json
mv composer.lock.dist composer.lock
mv src/Site/CustomisationExtension.php.dist src/Site/CustomisationExtension.php 

Change ownership of the /var/www/bolt directory to nginx.

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/bolt

Run sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and set the user and group to nginx.

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf
# user = nginx
# group = nginx

Restart php-fpm.service.

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

Open your domain/IP in the web browser and follow the Bolt CMS installation wizard. Bolt uses the SQLite database by default. If you want to use another supported database, you can configure it in the app/config/config.yml file. After that, you will have Bolt installed on your Fedora 28 server. To access Bolt’s administrative interface, append /bolt to your IP/domain.