Today we will show you how to Install appRain on an Ubuntu 14.04 VPS using Apache web-server and MySQL database.

appRain is one of the first, officially-released, open source Content Management Frameworks (CMF). It is a platform for building web-based applications. CMF is a new, web engineering concept where a Content Management System (CMS) and a rapid development framework perform side-by-side to produce endless varieties of output in a very limited time. It is fairly easy to install appRain on an Ubuntu 14.04 VPS. The installation process should take about 5-10 minutes if you follow the very easy steps described below.

At the time of writing this tutorial, appRain 4.0.4 is the latest stable version available and it requires:

– Apache Web Server;
– PHP (version 5.1. or higher);
– MySQL(version 5.1 or higher) installed on your Linux Server;

INSTRUCTIONS:

Login to your VPS via SSH

ssh user@vps

Update the system

[user]$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade

Install MariaDB 10.0

To install MariaDB, run the following command:

[user]$ sudo apt-get install -y mariadb-server

Next, we need to create a database for our appRain installation.

[user]$ mysql -u root -p

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE apprain;
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON apprain.* TO 'apprainuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> \q

Do not forget to replace ‘your-password’ with a strong password.

Install Apache2 web server

[user]$ sudo apt-get install apache2

Install PHP and required PHP modules

To install the latest stable version of PHP version 5 and all necessary modules, run:

[user]$ sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mcrypt php5-mysql php5-gd php5-curl

Enable the Apache2 rewrite module if it is not already enabled:

[user]$ sudo a2enmod rewrite

In order to activate the new configuration, restart the Apache web server using the following command:

[user]$ sudo service apache2 restart

Download and extract the latest version of appRain on your server:

[user]$ sudo cd /opt && wget https://github.com/apprain/apprain-source/archive/v4.0.4.zip
[user]$ sudo unzip v4.0.4.zip
[user]$ sudo mv apprain-source-4.0.4/ /var/www/html/apprain/

All files have to be readable by the web server, so we need to set the proper ownership

[user]$ sudo chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/apprain/

Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘apprain.conf’ on your virtual server:

[user]$ sudo touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/apprain.conf
[user]$ sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/apprain.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/apprain.conf
[user]$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/apprain.conf

Then, add the following lines:

ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/apprain/
ServerName your-domain.com
ServerAlias www.your-domain.com

Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all

ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-access_log common

Restart the Apache web server for the changes to take effect:

[user]$ sudo service apache2 restart

Open your favorite web browser, navigate to http://your-domain.com/ and if you configured everything correctly the appRain installer should be starting. You should follow the easy instructions on the install screen inserting the necessary information as requested.

That is it. The appRain installation is now complete.

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