How to install elgg on CentOS 8

Introduction

Elgg is an award-winning open source social networking engine that provides a robust framework on which to build all kinds of social environments, from a campus wide social network for your university, school or college or an internal collaborative platform for your organization through to a brand-building communications tool for your company and its clients.

In this installation guide, we will show you how to install elgg.

Just follow the steps below:

Install apache web server and enable it.

dnf install httpd -y
systemctl enable httpd.service
systemctl start httpd.service

Open ports 80 and 443 ports to be able to access the server.

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http 
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https
firewall-cmd --reload

Install MySQL-Server.

dnf install mysql-server -y

Complete the MySQL secure installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

You will be asked to enter a root password. Enter a safe password. then follow the answers below:

Set root password? [Y/n] Y    
New password:    #enter a strong password
Re-enter new 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

Create MySQL database for Elgg with logging into MySQL console by running the command below:

mysql -u root -p

Then create a mysql database for elgg by running mysql commands below:

mysql> CREATE DATABASE elgg;
mysql> CREATE USER 'unixcop'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'unixcoppassword';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON elgg.* TO 'unixcop'@'localhost';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> \q;

Note: You can change the database name “elgg” and db_user “unixcop” with any names you want.

Install php and required packages for it.

dnf install -y php php-common php-pgsql php-gd php-json php-pdo php-mbstring php-xml php-cli php-pear  php-pecl-apcu php-mysqlnd unzip

Change the directory to /var/www/html and download the latest version of Elgg.

cd /var/www/html
wget https://elgg.org/about/getelgg?forward=elgg-4.0.0.zip

Note: You can check updates to download the latest version of elgg from the official website

Unzip the downloaded archive.

unzip getelgg\?forward\=elgg-4.0.0.zip

Move the files to the root of the Apache server.

mv ./elgg-4.0.0/* .

Create a directory for Elgg .

mkdir -p /var/www/html/data

Set suitable file permissions for elgg files.

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/elgg-config

Change the enforcing of SELinux to permissive with command below:

setenforce 0

Configure Apache for Elgg by creating an Apache virtual host.

vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhost.conf

Next add the following then save and quit.

<VirtualHost *:80>
     DocumentRoot /var/www/html/
     ServerName elgg.unixcop.com
     <Directory /var/www/html/>
          Options FollowSymlinks
          AllowOverride All
          Require all granted
     </Directory>
     ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/elgg_error.log
     CustomLog /var/log/httpd/elgg_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>