Bludit 3.1.0 “Malt” Released — Install / Upgrade on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 | 18.10 with Nginx and PHP 7.2-FPM

The steps below show students and new users how to install or upgrade Bludit to the latest version 3.1.0 “Malt” on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 | 18.10..

Bludit, an open-source, flat-file content management system (CMS) with slick admin interface has recently been updated to version 3.1.0, codenamed “Malt” and this brief tutorial is going to show students and new users how to install or upgrade on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 and 18.10….

Bludit offers some features that may not be available to other PHP based content management systems, like WordPress Joomla or Drupal…

For one, it doesn’t need a database server to function… it’s a flat-file CMS… It also provides native mark down WYSIWYG support, SEO friendly, flexible CSS framework and easily installation and management…

When you’re looking for an alternative CMS to other popular platforms, Bludit might give you that…This release brings some changes including, new plugin search which helps user search in the plugin area, improved TinyMCE editor, bug fixes and others…

For more about this release, please visit its changelog page…

Step 1: Install Nginx HTTP Server on Ubuntu

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

http://localhost

Step 2: Install PHP 7.2-FPM and Related Modules

PHP 7.2-FPM may not be available in Ubuntu default repositories for some systems…. if you need 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 7.2-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 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 PHP default config file for Nginx…

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

Then make the changes on the following lines below in the file and save. The value below is great settings to apply in your environments.

file_uploads = On
allow_url_fopen = On
memory_limit = 256M
upload_max_filesize = 100M
cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0
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: Download Bludit Latest Release

Next, visit Bludit site and download the latest package…. or run the commands below to download Bludit packages from github….

After downloading, run the commands below to extract the downloaded file and move it into a new Bludit root directory. After that, change into Bludit root directory to install PHP required packages…

cd /tmp
wget https://bludit.s3.nl-ams.scw.cloud/bludit-3-1-0.zip
unzip bludit-3-1-0.zip
sudo mv bludit /var/www/html/bludit

Then run the commands below to set the correct permissions for Bludit to adjust the directory permissions…

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

Step 5: Configure Nginx Bludit Site

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

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/bludit.conf

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

    client_max_body_size 100M;

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

    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, enable it by running the commands below

Step 6: Enable the Bludit Site and Rewrite Module

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

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

Next, open your browser and browse to the server hostname or IP address and you should see Bludit page… enter your blog info and complete the setup…

http://example.com/

Create an admin account and complete the setup…

Enjoy!

Upgrading Bludit

The next steps are valid for upgrade any version of Bludit…. The major version is the first digit from the value, for example, Bludit v3.x.

First, stop the web server…

sudo systemctl stop nginx.service

Make a full backup, all files and directories.

sudo mv /var/www/html/bludit /var/www/html/bludit_bak

Remember which version of Bludit you are using for a possible roll-back.

Download the latest version from the official page, extract and move the newer content to the web server root directory…

cd /tmp
wget https://bludit.s3.nl-ams.scw.cloud/bludit-3-1-0.zip
unzip bludit-3-1-0.zip
sudo mv bludit /var/www/html/bludit

Replace bl-content, bl-themes and bl-plugins with backup versions…

sudo cp -rf /var/www/html/bludit_bak/bl-content /var/www/html/bludit/
sudo cp -rf /var/www/html/bludit_bak/bl-themes /var/www/html/bludit/
sudo cp -rf /var/www/html/bludit_bak/bl-plugins /var/www/html/bludit/

Start the web server..

sudo systemctl start nginx.service

Log into the admin area and check your settings.

http://example.com/admin