Setup Thunder CMS on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 | 18.10 with Nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7.2-FPM

For those who want to run Thunder CMS on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 | 18.10 with Nginx and PHP 7.2-FPM, the steps below should be a great place to start.

Thunder is an open source fork and modified version of Drupal CMS that serves the business and professional publishers market.… It is based on Drupal, enabling its users to benefit from the Drupal community’s continuous development efforts and establishing a culture of collaboration and sharing within the publishing industry.

With Thunder, you get a clean and simple administrative area without the clutter… Webmasters and users who still appreciate Drupal’s classic interface will feel comfortable building online databases, e-commerce and multilingual sites….

For more about Thunder, please check their Homepage

This brief tutorial is going to show students and new users how to install Thunder CMS on Ubuntu 16.04 / 18.10 and 18.04 LTS…

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

Step 1: Install Nginx HTTP Server

Thunder CMS requires a web server and Nginx HTTP server is probably the second most popular open source web server available today. To install Nginx 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

Now that Nginx is installed. to test whether the web server is working, open your browser and browse to the URL below.

If you see the page above, then Nginx is successfully installed.

Step 2: Install MariaDB Database Server

Thunder also requires a database server to store its content. If you’re looking for a truly open source database server, then MariaDB is a great place to start. 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 18.10 and 18.04 LTS

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

Next, run the commands below to secure the database server with a root password if you were not prompted to do so during the installation.

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

Now that MariaDB is installed, to test whether the database server was successfully installed, run the commands below.

sudo mysql -u root -p

type the root password when prompted.

If you see a similar screen as shown above, then the server was successfully installed.

Step 3: Install PHP 7.2-FPM and Related Modules

Thunder CMS is a PHP based CMS and PHP is required. However, PHP 7.2-FPM may not be available in Ubuntu default repositories. To run PHP 7.2-FPM on Ubuntu 16.04 and previous, you may need to run the commands below:

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-mysql php7.2-gmp php7.2-curl php7.2-intl php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-cli php7.2-zip

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

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

The lines below is a good settings for most PHP based CMS. Update the configuration file with these and save.

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

Everytime you make changes to PHP configuration file, you should also restart Nginx web server. To do so, run the commands below:

sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

Now that PHP is installed, to test whether it’s functioning, create a test file called phpinfo.php in Nginx default root directory. ( /var/www/html/)

sudo nano /var/www/html/phpinfo.php

Then type the content below and save the file.

<?php phpinfo( ); ?>

Next, open your browser and browse to the server’s hostname or IP address followed by phpinfo.php

/phpinfo.php

You should see PHP default test page.

Step 4: Create Thunder Database

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

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

sudo mysql -u root -p

Then create a database called thunder

CREATE DATABASE thunder;

Create a database user called thunderuser with a new password

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

Then grant the user full access to the database.

GRANT ALL ON thunder.* TO 'thunderuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password_here' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Finally, save your changes and exit.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Step 5: Download Thunder Latest Release

To get Thunder 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 download Thunder packages from Github.

cd /var/www/html
sudo composer create-project burdamagazinorg/thunder-project thunder
cd /var/www/html/thunder/
sudo composer install

Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for Thunder root directory and give Nginx control.

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

Step 6: Configure Nginx

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

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

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

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

    location @rewrite {
               rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1;
        }

    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;
    }

    location ~ ^/sites/.*/files/styles/ {
               try_files $uri @rewrite;
        }

    location ~ ^(/[a-z\-]+)?/system/files/ {
        try_files $uri /index.php?$query_string;
        }
}

Save the file and exit.

Step 7: Enable the Thunder and Rewrite Module

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

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

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

Then follow the on-screen instructions. select the installation language and continue.

Next, type in the database information you created above and continue.

Next, configure your site info and admin account, then continue

After a moment, Thunder should be installed and ready to use. You should be able to logon with the admin account created above.

That’s it!

Congratulation! You have successfully installed Thunder CMS on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 and 18.10.

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