How to Install and Configure HTMLy on Alibaba Cloud

By Arslan Ud Din Shafiq, Alibaba Cloud Community Blog author.

HTMLy is an open-source content management system (CMS) that allows you to seamlessly manage your content. It is designed to support RSS, RSS importer, sitemap, and OPML and prioritize simplicity and speed.

In this tutorial, we will install and setup an HTMLy on Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) with Ubuntu 16.04 installed.

Prerequisites

You must have Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) activated and verified your valid payment method. If you are a new user, you can get $300 – $1200 worth in Alibaba Cloud credits for your new account. If you don't know how to setup your ECS instance, you can refer to this tutorial or quick-start guide. Your ECS instance must have at least 1GB RAM and 1 Core processor).
A domain name registered from Alibaba Cloud. If you have already registered a domain from Alibaba Cloud or any other host, you can update its domain nameserver records.
Domain name must be pointed to your Alibaba Cloud ECS's IP address
Access to VNC console in your Alibaba Cloud or SSH client installed in your PC
Set up your server's hostname and create a user with root privileges.

Setting Up Your Server

Before proceeding with the installation of any kind of package, use the following command to update your Ubuntu system. To execute this command, remember to login from non-root user with Sudo privileges.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

After executing the above command, you will get a prompt stating "Is this ok?" Type 'y' and hit the Enter key.

Install Apache

HTMLy CMS supports Nginx, Apache, LiteSpeed, Lightly, and IIS web-servers. For this tutorial, we need to install Apache. To install apache server, execute the following command.

sudo apt-get install apache2 -y

Install PHP

HTMLy requires the installation of PHP 5.3 or a later version of PHP. In this tutorial, we will install PHP 7.2. By executing the following steps.

For installing PHP 7.2, begin with installing python software properties and software properties common using the command below.

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common python-software-properties

To get the latest versions of PHP, you need to add the repository by executing the following command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Next, update the system to refresh the available repositories to ensure that PHP 7.2 repository available for installation. Execute the below command for updating the Ubuntu system.

sudo apt update

Once the PHP 7.2 repository is loaded successfully, execute the following command to install PHP 7.2.

sudo apt install -y php7.2

Install Required PHP Extensions

HTMLy requires the PHP extension called "php7.2-xml". Execute the following command to install the required extension.

sudo apt-get -y install php7.2-xml

You can also execute the following command to check the installed PHP version.

php --version

Install Unzip

Further, you need to install Unzip which will be used to unzip the compressed zip folder. For installing unzip, execute the below command.

sudo apt-get install unzip -y

Install Composer

Before installing HTMLy, you also need to install and setup the Composer by executing the following commands.

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"

php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '93b54496392c062774670ac18b134c3b3a95e5a5e5c8f1a9f115f203b75bf9a129d5daa8ba6a13e2cc8a1da0806388a8') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"

php composer-setup.php

php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Now, to check whether the composer is installed successfully, execute the following command and verify the version of the Composer.

composer -v

Install HTMLy

Now, moving on to installing HTMLy, follow the steps listed below.

Begin by navigating to /var/www/html using the following command.

cd /var/www/html

Next, change the ownership of /var/www/html directory by executing the below command.

sudo chown -R aareez:aareez /var/www/html

Remove index.html file using the command below.
rm index.html

Since in this tutorial, we are installing v2.7.4 of HTMLy. We can confirm the latest version from https://github.com/danpros/htmly/releases Use the following command to download the latest stable release of HTMLy.

wget https://github.com/danpros/htmly/archive/v2.7.4.zip

Now unzip the downloaded zipped folder by executing the following command.

unzip v2.7.4.zip

Execute the following command to extract v2.7.4.zip.

rm v2.7.4.zip

Execute the following command to copy downloaded files.

mv /var/www/html/htmly-2.7.4/* /var/www/html

Also execute the following command to extract htmly-2.7.4.zip.

rm -r htmly-2.7.4

Navigate to /var/www/html/config directory using the command below.

cd /var/www/html/config

Execute the following command to create config.ini for HTMLy configurations.

cp -i /var/www/html/config/config.ini.example /var/www/html/config/config.ini

Now open config.ini file using Nano text editor by executing the command below.

nano config.ini

Next, setup site URL by adding a value of site.url parameter as shown below.

You can edit your blog title, tagline, description, and copyright by editing the parameters blog.title, blog.tagline, blog.description and blog.copyright.

For setting up social accounts, you need to modify the links of respective social handles such as Facebook, Twitter, Google , and Tumblr. Once all the changes are done, save the settings.

Navigate to /var/www/html/config/users by executing command below.

cd /var/www/html/config/users

To set up the admin account, you will need to create a file in /var/www/html/config/users named as username.ini by executing the command below.

cp -i /var/www/html/config/users/username.ini.example /var/www/html/config/users/username.ini

Open the file in the Nano editor using the command mentioned below to update role and password values and save the updated file.

nano username.ini

Finally, provide ownership of /var/www/html to www-data so that the Apache server can access the required files.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html

Configure Apache Server

Let's create a virtual host configuration file for HTMLy by using the following command.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/htmly.conf

A file will get open in Nano text editor. Copy and paste the following code and save the file.

<VirtualHost *:80> 
    ServerAdmin admin@xyz.com
    ServerName softpedia.xyz
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/
    DirectoryIndex index.php index.htm index.html
   <Directory /var/www/html>
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
   <Directory /var/www/html/data>
        Order Deny,Allow
        Deny from all
    </Directory>

 ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/HTMLy_error.log
    LogLevel warn
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/HTMLy_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

You need to execute the command below to disable the default site.

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

Now, to enable the newly created virtual host, execute the following command.

sudo a2ensite htmly

Next, you need to enable rewrite mode by either editing configuration file in the Apache2 directory or simply executing the command below:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Also, you need to enable SSL engine by either editing configuration file in the Apache2 directory or by simply executing the following command.

sudo a2enmod ssl

Restart the Apache server to apply the changes and load the settings by using the command mentioned below:

sudo service apache2 restart

So, now you can access HTMLy via your domain name or ECS IP address. In this tutorial, we have accessed the same via http://softpedia.xyz Next, you will be redirected to the following page.

Install SSL Certificate

To install the SSL certificate using Let's Encrypt, you can use Certbot while executing the following steps.

Update the package using the command below.

sudo apt-get update

Install software-properties-common by executing the following command.

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

Add the Certbot repository by using the command below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

Update the package to load the added Certbot repository as shown below.

sudo apt-get update

Don't forget to stop Apache before the issuance of the SSL certificate.

sudo systemctl stop apache2

Now, install python-certbot-apache using the command below.

sudo apt-get install python-certbot-apache

Execute the following command to get Let's Encrypt SSL certificate.

sudo certbot --apache -d softpedia.xyz

Select option 2 to redirect the link to https and update virtual host settings for SSL.

After a successful issuance of the SSL certificate, you will be redirected to the following screen.

Now, restart the Apache server as shown below.

sudo systemctl start apache2

Access your website by hitting your URL.

Setup Firewalls and Ports

If you have activated firewalls, you need to define a rule in Alibaba Cloud security group for your cloud server to add an exception for port 80/TCP and 443/TCP. You can enable these ports while creating ECS instance, but in case if you have forgotten to unblock these ports, you can follow the procedure in this guide: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/doc-detail/25471.htm

There you go! You have successfully installed and configured HTMLy on your Alibaba Cloud ECS.

Community

How to Install and Configure HTMLy on Alibaba Cloud

Prerequisites

Setting Up Your Server

Install Apache

Install PHP

Install Required PHP Extensions

Install Unzip

Install Composer

Install HTMLy

Configure Apache Server

Install SSL Certificate

Setup Firewalls and Ports

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