Setup Mautic on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 with Nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7.1-FPM

Our recent tutorial showed students and new users how to install Mautic on Ubuntu with Apache2 HTTP and PHP 7.1 support. This post shows you how to set it up with Nginx and PHP 7.1-FPM instead.

Mautic is an open source, self-hosted marketing automation software based on the LAMP or LEMP stack.… It is designed from the ground up for ease of use to make marketing automation decisions as intuitive as possible.

If you’re looking for a robust marketing automation software to use in your environment, you’ll find Mautic to be useful. This brief tutorial is going to show students and new users how to install Mautic on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 LTS with Nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7.1-FPM support.

Whether you’re a small or medium-size business, you may find it useful to try Mautic. It may just be the software to replace your current solution.

To get started with installing Mautic, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Install Nginx HTTP Server on Ubuntu

Nginx HTTP Server is the most popular web server in use. so install it, since Mautic 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 Nginxdefault test page as shown below. When you see that, then Nginx is working as expected.

nginx default home page test

Step 2: Install MariaDB Database Server

MariaDB database server is a great place to start when looking at open source database servers to use with Magento. To install MariaDB run the commands below.

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client

After installing MariaDB, the commands below can be used to stop, start and enable MariaDB service to always start up when the server boots.

Run these on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

sudo systemctl stop mysql.service
sudo systemctl start mysql.service
sudo systemctl enable mysql.service

Run these on Ubuntu 18.04 and 18.10 LTS

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

After that, run the commands below to secure MariaDB server by creating a root password and disallowing remote root access.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

When prompted, answer the questions below by following the guide.

  • Enter current password for root (enter for none): Just press the Enter
  • Set root password? [Y/n]: Y
  • New password: Enter password
  • Re-enter new password: Repeat password
  • Remove anonymous users? [Y/n]: Y
  • Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n]: Y
  • Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n]:  Y
  • Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n]:  Y

Restart MariaDB server

To test if MariaDB is installed, type the commands below to logon to MariaDB server

sudo mysql -u root -p

Then type the password you created above to sign on. if successful, you should see MariaDB welcome message

mariadb welcome

Step 3: Install PHP 7.1 and Related Modules

PHP 7.1 may not be available in 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 7.1

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.1

sudo apt update

Next, run the commands below to install PHP 7.2 and related modules.

sudo apt install php7.1-fpm php7.1-common php7.1-gmp php7.1-curl php7.1-intl php7.1-mbstring php7.1-xmlrpc php7.1-mysql php7.1-bcmath php7.1-gd php7.1-xml php7.1-cli php7.1-zip

After installing PHP 7.2, run the commands below to open PHP default config file for Nginx.

sudo nano /etc/php/7.1/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
short_open_tag = 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, 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: Create Mautic Database

Now that you’ve installed all the packages that are required for Mautic to function, continue below to start configuring the servers. First run the commands below to create a blank Magento database.

To logon to MariaDB database server, run the commands below.

sudo mysql -u root -p

Then create a database called mautic

CREATE DATABASE mautic;

Create a database user called mauticuser with new password

CREATE USER 'mauticuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_password_here';

Then grant the user full access to the database.

GRANT ALL ON mautic.* TO 'mauticuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password_here' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Finally, save your changes and exit.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Step 5: Download Mautic Latest Release

To get Mautic latest release you may want to use Github repository. Install Composer, Curl and other dependencies to get started.

sudo apt install curl git
curl -sS  | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

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

cd /var/www/html
sudo git clone 
cd /var/www/html/mautic
sudo composer install

Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for Mautic to function.

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

Step 6: Configure Nginx

Finally, configure Apahce2 site configuration file for Mautic. This file will control how users access Mautic content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called mautic

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

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/mautic;
    index  index.php index.html index.htm;
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;

     client_max_body_size 100M;

    location / {
        try_files $uri /index.php$is_args$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.

Step 7: Enable the Mautic and Rewrite Module

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

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mautic /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

Then open your browser and browse to the server domain name. You should see Mautic setup wizard to complete. Please follow the wizard carefully.

Then follow the on-screen instructions. you will be asked to input your database configuration, administrative details and other configuration settings. When complete you may sign-in and start using Mautic.

Return to login/ anytime thereafter to sign-in.

mautic ubuntu install

Type in Mautic database information created above and continue.

mautic ubuntu installation

Create an admin account to manage Mautic and continue.

mautic ubuntu setup

Congratulation! You have successfully installed Mautic on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 and may work on upcoming 18.10.

ubuntu mautic

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