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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

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