Install Fuel CMS on Ubuntu 16.04 | 17.10 | 18.04 with Nginx, MariaDB and PHP 7.1 Support
Fuel CMS, a CMS platform that editors should love also supports Nginx HTTP server… In our recent post, we showed you how to install Fuel CMS with Apache2 support… well, this post shows you how to run Fuel with Nginx instead…
To get Fuel CMS working with Nginx, the steps below should be a great place to start…
Fuel CMS is an open source content management system for premium-grade websites and blogs…. It built on CodeIgniter, a popular PHP web framework for advanced web development…
Whether you’re creating a personal or business website, Fuel CMS can help you create and manage your content on every device with its intuitive and powerful admin dashboard…
This brief tutorial is going to show students and new users how to install Fuel CMS on Ubuntu 16.04 / 17.10 and 18.04.
If you currently runing your website and content on other CMS like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla you may want to give Fuel CMS a try… It’s a great alternative to those PHP based content mangement systems.
For more on Fuel CMS , please vist its home page
When you’re ready to get Fuel CMS working on Ubuntu, please continue with the steps below:
Step 1: Install Nginx HTTP Server on Ubuntu
Nginx HTTP Server is the second most popular web server in use… so install it, since Fuel CMS 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..

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 17.10 and 18.04 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

Step 3: Install PHP 7.1-FPM 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-FPM
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
Then update and upgrade to PHP 7.1-FPM
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-sqlite3 php7.1-mcrypt php7.1-curl php7.1-intl php7.1-mbstring php7.1-xmlrpc php7.1-mysql php7.1-gd php7.1-xml php7.1-cli php7.1-zip
After installing PHP 7.1, 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 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 Feul CMS Database
Now that you’ve installed all the packages that are required for Fuel CMS 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 fuelcms
CREATE DATABASE fuelcms;
Create a database user called fueluser with new password
CREATE USER 'fueluser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_password_here';
Then grant the user full access to the database.
GRANT ALL ON fuelcms.* TO 'fueluser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password_here' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Finally, save your changes and exit.
FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT;
Step 5: Download and Install Fuel CMS
Run the commands below to download Fuel CMS latest (1.4.2) content… then unzip the download file and move the content to Nginx default root directory…
cd /tmp && wget https://github.com/daylightstudio/FUEL-CMS/archive/master.zip unzip master.zip sudo mv FUEL-CMS-master /var/www/html/fuelcms
Next, run the commands below to change the root folder permissions…
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/fuelcms/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/fuelcms/
Step 6: Configure Nginx Fuel CMS Site
Finally, configure Nginx configuration file for Fuel CMS . This file will control how users access Fuel CMS content. Run the commands below to create a new configuration file called fuelcms
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/fuelcms
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/fuelcms;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
client_max_body_size 100M;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.1-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
}
Save the file and exit.
After configuring the VirtualHost above, enable it by running the commands below
Step 7: Enable the Fuel CMS 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/fuelcms /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ sudo systemctl restart nginx.service
Next, open your brwoser and go to the URL.. and continue with the installation….
When you browse to the server hostname, you should see 4 steps to getting Fuel CMS configured… start with Step 2 ….

Continue with the setup instructions below to complete the installation…
For step 2, run the commands below to import the fuel_schema.sql into the newly created database above…
sudo mysql -u fueluser -p fuelcms < /var/www/html/fuelcms/fuel/install/fuel_schema.sql
Next, go to Step 4 and complete the below setup..
In the fuel/application/config/config.php, change the $config[‘encryption_key’] to your own unique key.
sudo nano /var/www/html/fuelcms/fuel/application/config/config.php
You can use openssl tool to generate random key… Run the commands below to generate a random key using openssl tool…
openssl rand -base64 20
The copy the value into the line below… you can replace the number 20 with any…
$config['encryption_key'] = 'DzUdCphy+uIAlOSgI7+TO4bTc6Y=';
Next, enable the admin logon by changing the line below to True
Run the commands below to open the file…
sudo nano /var/www/html/fuelcms/fuel/application/config/MY_fuel.php
Then make the below change…and save…
// whether the admin backend is enabled or not $config['admin_enabled'] = TRUE; .... $config['fuel_mode'] = 'AUTO';

Save your changes…
To access the FUEL admin, go to:
http://example.com/fuel
User name: admin
Password: admin
(you can and should change this password and admin user information after logging in)
Enjoy!

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