Dotclear, an application for anyone to publish a blog

In the following article we are going to take a look at how to install Dotclear on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Is about an application for blogging. It is free and open source. It has been designed to provide an easy-to-use interface that allows anyone to post their ideas on a blog.

Dotclear is a blog publishing application that is written in PHP and distributed under the GNU GPLv2. It includes some built-in features to work with such as blog management, use of XHTML syntax for posts, the ability to add pages, etc. It also supports various types of databases, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.

The purpose of the project is to provide an easy-to-use tool that allows anyone who wants to publish your own website, regardless of your technical skills. Dotclear is software designed for all types of users and regularly improved by contributions. Anyone can use and modify it in accordance with the software license.

WordPress 5.1, install this CMS on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Install Dotclear on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

The installation of this application requires a few steps. Next, for this example, we will see how install Dotclear on an Ubuntu 18.04.

To begin with, we are going to make sure that all system packages are up to date running the following script:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Something that we will also have to take into account is that a LAMP server is required (Linux, Apache, MariaDB and PHP). If you don't have it installed, you can continue The Guide that a colleague wrote a while ago to do so. We will also have to install the necessary PHP modules:

sudo apt-get install php7.2 libapache2-mod-php7.2 php7.2-common php7.2-mbstring php7.2-xmlrpc php7.2-soap php7.2-gd php7.2-xml php7.2-intl php7.2-mysql php7.2-cli php7.2-zip php7.2-curl

Download Dotclear

At this moment we can download the latest stable version of Dotclear. At the time of writing this article is the version 2.14.3.

cd /var/www/html

sudo wget https://download.dotclear.org/loader/dotclear-loader.php

Now we will have to change some folder permissions where we have saved the installer:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

Configure MariaDB

We will be able protect MariaDB using script mysql_secure_installation. It is important to read and follow each step carefully as it will ask us about setting the root password, removing anonymous users, not allowing remote login, removing the test database, or secure MariaDB access.

mysql_secure_installation

Next, we will have to log in to the MariaDB console and create a database for Dotclear. Run the following command:

sudo mysql -u root -p

This will ask for a password, so type in your MariaDB root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in, you need to create a database for the Dotclear installation. You can use the following commands to do this:

CREATE DATABASE dotclear;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON dotclear.* TO dotclearuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'Password';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

\q

Configure Apache

For create virtual host configuration file for your domain, run the following command:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/tu-dominio.com.conf

Add the following lines, modifying them as necessary:

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin admin@tu-dominio.com
ServerName tu-dominio.com
ServerAlias www.tu-dominio.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html

<Directory /var/www/html>
     Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
     AllowOverride All
     Require all granted
</Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/tu_dominio_error.log 
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/tu_dominio_access.log combined 
</VirtualHost>

Save and close the file. Now there will be enable virtual host configuration file. To do so, run:

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/tu_dominio.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/tu_dominio.com.conf

Access Dotclear

Dotclear will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and go to:

http://tu_dominio/dotclear-loader.php

This URL will take us to the installer page:

To begin with, we will have to do click the button 'Retrieve and unzip Dotclear'and follow the on-screen instructions.

On the second screen, we must write MariaDB database configurationSo if you've followed the instructions in this article, use the following details:

Database type: MySQLi
Host Name: localhost or whatever corresponds.
Name: dotclear
User Name: dotclearuser
Password: Password
Master Email: admin@your-domain.com

When the installation is done successfully, we will have nothing more than cover user information.

Then he will show us a screen with access information to the blog.

If all goes well, you will have successfully installed Dotclear on Ubuntu 18.04.

For get help about the configuration, installation or useful information about the application, it is always advisable to visit the Official website by Dotclear.

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