How To Build an Ubuntu Web Server For Joomla and JomSocial

The following is a task outline for building an Ubuntu-based web-server to run Joomla and JomSocial.  I created this for my own notes, so apologies if it's a bit cryptic.

Ubuntu server

• minimum install
  
• choose LAMP & SSH server during install
• static IP address
  

Install packages

• php5-curl
  
• php5-xmlrpc
• ffmpeg
• flvtool2
  
• unzip
• zip
• phpmyadmin
  
• wget
  
• nano (optional)
  
• webmin (optional)
  
  

Create DNS entries / zones (if necessary)

Apache

• enable rewrite module
• enable PHP module
  
• allow override for site (.htaccess) in the site directives (under the site's virtual server config)

SSL

• enable Apache SSL module (global config)
• listen on port 443
• change default server root to /var/www (document options)
• generate a certificate using Webmin and set Apache to use the self-generated certificate (for now)
• modify /etc/apache2/ports.conf to allow SSL on named virtual hosts

PHPMyAdmin

• don't configure it for Apache during the install
• create a virtual host on a custom port to /usr/share/phpmyadmin
• add the listening port under Apache networking

Joomla

• set file / folder permissions
• set owner to www-data
• set Joomla email settings - use ISP's SMTP server if you don't want to run mail services on the web-server
• verify the file / folder permissions using a tool like Akeeba Admin Tools or RSFirewall

JomSocial

• setup JomSocial cron job - wget -O /dev/null "http://www.domain.com/index.php?option=com_community&task=cron" > /dev/null
• php.ini (/etc/php5/apache) configuration changes as suggested in JomSocial documentation
  

max_execution_time = 9000 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds
max_input_time = 9000 ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data
memory_limit = 1024M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume
post_max_size = 4096M ; Maximum size of POST data that PHP will accept.
upload_max_filesize = 4096M ; Maximum allowed size for uploaded files.

PHP Security

• set expose_php to OFF in php.ini