Quick Guide to Install and Configure InvoicePlane on Alibaba Cloud

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

InvoicePlane is a free-to-use web-based application for managing invoices, quotes, payments, and clients. It is a complete solution for managing end-to-end billing cycles. It also supports several payment gateways and allows an organization's clients to pay via Paypal, Stripe, Bitcoin and many more.

In this tutorial, we will install and set up InvoicePlane 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 about 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

Firstly, use the following command to update your Ubuntu system before proceeding with the installation of any type of package. For executing this command, remember to login from non-root user with Sudo privileges.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Install PHP

InvoicePlane requires the installation of PHP 7.0.0 or a later version of PHP. For this tutorial, we will install PHP 7.2 by executing the following steps:

Install python software properties and software properties common as these are necessary for the installation of PHP 7.2. To do so, execute the command below.

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

You need to add a repository for the later versions of PHP by executing the commands below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Update the system to refresh the available repositories and make PHP 7.2 repository available for installation. Execute the following command for updating the Ubuntu system.

sudo apt update

Once PHP 7.2 repository loads successfully, install PHP 7.2 by using the following command.

sudo apt install -y php7.2

Install Apache

InvoicePlane requires Apache or Nginx server. In this tutorial, we will use the Apache server. To install the Apache server, execute the following command.

sudo apt install -y apache2

Install PHP Extensions

InvoicePlane requires the multiple PHP extensions, including php7.2-cli, php7.2-fpm, php7.2-gd, php7.2-common, php7.2-mbstring, php7.2-json, php7.2-mysql, and php7.2-xmlrpc. Execute the following command to install all the required extensions.

sudo apt-get install -y php7.2-cli php7.2-fpm php7.2-gd php7.2-common php7.2-json php7.2-mbstring php7.2-mysql php7.2-xmlrpc fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core libfontconfig1 libgd3 libwebp6 libxmlrpc-epi0 libxpm4

After successful installation, the domain or IP address can be accessed via a browser.

To check whether you have correctly installed PHP, you can execute the following command and verify the installed PHP version.

php --version

Install PHP-Pear

To install php-pear, execute the following command.

sudo apt-get install php-pear -y

Install Libgd-Tools

Install Libgd-Tools by using the command below.

sudo apt-get install libgd-tools -y

Install MariaDB

InvoicePlane supports MySQL and for this tutorial, we will use the MariaDB server for MySQL. By default, the Ubuntu repository has an older version of the MariaDB server. We need to add MariaDB repository to the Ubuntu system for using the new version of MariaDB by following the steps listed below:

Verify the keys by executing the command shown below.

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xF1656F24C74CD1D8

Add the repository using the following command.

sudo add-apt-repository 'deb [arch=amd64,i386,ppc64el] http://mirror.nodesdirect.com/mariadb/repo/10.2/ubuntu xenial main'

Now update the system by using the command below.

sudo apt update

Now install MariaDB using the following command.

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server

Start and enable the MariaDB server to ensure that after reboot, the server starts automatically.

sudo systemctl start mariadb

sudo systemctl enable mariadb

Now run the following command to enhance security of MariaDB server and set password for the root user.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Also, connect to the MySQL shell as the root user by executing the command below and enter your password.

sudo mysql -u root -p

Execute the following MySQL queries in your MariaDB server.

CREATE DATABASE plane CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;
CREATE USER 'aareez'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '654321Ab';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON plane.* TO 'aareez'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Install Unzip

You also need to install Unzip which will later be used to unzip the compressed zip folder. Execute the following command to install unzip.

sudo apt-get install unzip -y

Install InvoicePlane

To install InvoicePlane, you will need to follow the steps.

Navigate to /var/www/html using the command.

cd /var/www/html

Next, you need to change the ownership of /var/www/html directory as shown below.

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

Remove index.html file using the command below.

rm index.html

Also, download the latest stable release of InvoicePlane using the command below.

sudo curl -O -J -L https://invoiceplane.com/download/v1.5.9

Unzip the downloaded zipped folder as shown below.

unzip v1.5.9.zip

Execute the following command to remove v1.5.9.zip.

rm -r v1.5.9.zip

Now move the downloaded files to /var/www/html by executing command below.

mv /var/www/html/ip/* /var/www/html

Next, remove InvoicePlane-master by running the following command.

rm -r ip

Create a copy of ipconfig.php.example and name it as ipconfig.php

cp ipconfig.php.example ipconfig.php

Open ipconfig.php file using Nano editor and add IP_URL in the same.

nano ipconfig.php

Lastly, ,provide ownership of /var/www/html to www-data so that 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 InvoicePlane. Execute the following command to open a file in the Nano text editor.

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

Copy and paste the following code and save the file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
 ServerAdmin admin@softpedia.xyz
 DocumentRoot /var/www/html/
 ServerName softpedia.xyz
 ServerAlias www.softpedia.xyz
 <Directory /var/www/html/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
 </Directory>
 ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/InvoicePlane_error.log
    LogLevel warn
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/InvoicePlane_access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Next, execute the command below to disable the default site.

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

You also need to enable the newly created virtual host. To do so, execute the command below.

sudo a2ensite invoice

Another thing that is required here is to enable rewrite mod by either editing configuration file in Apache2 directory or by simply executing the command below.

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Next, you need to enable SSL engine. You can do so by either editing configuration file in Apache2 directory or executing the following command.

sudo a2enmod ssl

Restart the Apache server to apply the changes and load the settings by executing the command below

sudo service apache2 restart

Set Up 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

Install SSL Certificate

You need to use Certbot for installing the SSL certificate using Let's Encrypt. To do so, execute the following steps.

Update the package using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

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

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

Add the Certbot repository by using the following command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

Use the command below to update the package for loading the added Certbot repository.

sudo apt-get update

Ensure to stop Apache before issuance of the SSL certificate as shown below.

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 issued.

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 navigated to the following screen.

Now, run the following command to restart the Apache server.

sudo systemctl start apache2

Finally, you can access InvoicePlane by hitting your URL.

Configure InvoicePlane

Once you access InvoicePlane via browser using domain or IP address, you will be taken to the welcome page. Click the Setup button to start configurations for InvoicePlane.

Once, you select a language and click the Continue button. You will be redirected to the following screen.

The above page will show the required configurations for starting the installation of InvoicePlane. If everything is OK, click Continue. You will be redirected to database configuration page, where you need to add the database configurations details and click Try Again button.

You will be redirected to the following screen after successful connection.

Click Continue to navigate to the following screen.

Click Continue, you will be redirected to following.

Once you click Continue, you will be redirected to the following page.

Now, fill the form for administrator and click Continue to navigate to the page shown below.

Open ipconfig.php file using Nano editor and change DISABLE_SETUP value to true and save the file.

sudo nano ipconfig.php

Finally, click on the Login to navigate to the following login page.

Here, enter your account credentials to log in to your admin account. Once you log in, you will be redirected to the account dashboard as shown below.

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

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