How to install Vanilla Forum on Ubuntu 20.04?

Hello, folks. This post is about how to install Vanilla Forum on Ubuntu 20.04.

Vanilla is an opensource discussion forum the installation is also very easy. Please follow the steps to get a successful vanilla forum installation. maybe your  need some pre-installed packages  to avoid any issues

Install Vanilla Forum on Ubuntu 20.04

Previous requisites

Before starting with the installation guide, there are a few things you should do.

The first one is to update the system completely. In a terminal execute the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Secondly, it is convenient to install some packages before we need them.

sudo apt install wget unzip

Now we can start the installation process.

1.- Install LAMP on Ubuntu 20.04

In this guide, we will show you how to install Vanilla Forum using Apache. Remember that Vanilla Forum is a web application that allows you to quickly deploy a forum. Therefore it requires a web server and a database manager like MariaDB.

So, you have to install LAMP. Please read our about it:

How to install LAMP on Ubuntu 20.04?

Also, install these PHP modules.

php7.4 php7.4-cli libapache2-mod-php php7.4-common php7.4-mbstring php7.4-curl php7.4-gd php7.4-mysql php7.4-json php-intl php-xml

After LAMP is perfectly configured we can continue.

2.- Creating the new Database for Vanilla Forum

With MariaDB ready and configured we can create a new user and a new database dedicated to Vanilla.

So, open the MariaDB shell

sudo mysql -u root -p

And it starts with the database:

CREATE DATABASE vanilla;

Then, by the user and their permissions:

GRANT ALL ON vanilla.* TO 'vanillauser' IDENTIFIED BY 'vanillapss';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Finally, exit the shell.

exit;

So, you can continue.

3.- Download and install Vanilla Forum on Ubuntu 20.04

Now we can start the download. First, create a folder for Vanilla.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/vanilla

And assign the corresponding permissions:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/vanilla
sudo chmod 755 -R /var/www/vanilla

Now, access the folder and start downloading Vanilla Forum.

cd /var/www/vanilla
wget -c https://us.v-cdn.net/5018160/uploads/addons/3JQXC5NIGUWR.zip -O vanilla.zip
--2020-09-25 16:44:02-- https://us.v-cdn.net/5018160/uploads/addons/3JQXC5NIGUWR.zip
Resolving us.v-cdn.net (us.v-cdn.net)… 104.18.193.13, 104.18.194.13, 2606:4700::6812:c10d, …
Connecting to us.v-cdn.net (us.v-cdn.net)|104.18.193.13|:443… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 18707111 (18M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘vanilla.zip’
vanilla.zip 100%[=====================================================================================>] 17.84M 676KB/s in 24s
2020-09-25 16:44:27 (759 KB/s) - ‘vanilla.zip’ saved [18707111/18707111]

You can also access the Vanilla Forum website and download it and then upload it to your server.

Decompress it with unzip:

unzip vanilla.zip

And now create a new virtualhost for Vanilla Forum:

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

And add the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@your_domain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/html/vanilla/package
    ServerName forum.osradar.test
   
   <Directory /var/www/html/vanilla/package>
         Options FollowSymlinks
         AllowOverride All
         Require all granted
    </Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Replace the values of ServerName, ServerAdmin, and your-domain with your own.

So, save the changes and close the editor.

Enable the new VirtualHost and rewrite module of PHP. Finally, restart Apache.

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/vanilla.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/vanilla.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Now to install it from the web interface.

4.- Install Vanilla Forum on Ubuntu 20.04 using the Web interface

Now open your favorite web browser and access the Vanilla Forum. You will see the following screen:

In it, you will be able to define the database parameters to be used as a username and password. These data have been created previously.

If you scroll down, you will also have the option to use a custom .htaccess. Below you can set the administrator username and password.

When you have entered all this information, you can continue.

When you are finished with the installation, you will see this page. Where you can watch some tutorials, see the dashboard or visit the forum website.

In summary, this screen indicates that the installation has been a success and that you can start enjoying Vanilla Forum.

Conclusion

Thanks to this post, installing Vanilla Forum will no longer be a problem for you. As you know first you need to have a web server and then download the program. All this is quite simple but it’s always good to see the process. And for the potential of Vanilla Forum, it stays easy.

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