How to Install Pico CMS with Nginx and Let's Encrypt on CentOS 7

Pico is an open-source simple and fast flat-file CMS written in PHP. This means there is no administration backend and database to deal with. You simply create .md files in the content folder and that becomes a page. Pico uses the Twig templating engine, for powerful and flexible themes. Pico source code is available on Github. In this tutorial, we will install Pico CMS with Nginx on CentOS 7 system.

Requirements

Requirements for running Pico are:

  • Nginx
  • PHP version 5.3.6 or greater
  • Composer

Prerequisites

  • A CentOS 7 operating system.
  • A non-root user with sudo privileges.

Initial steps

Check your CentOS version:

cat /etc/centos-release
# CentOS Linux release 7.6.1810 (Core)

Set up the timezone:

timedatectl list-timezones
sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Region/City'

Update your operating system packages (software). This is an important first step because it ensures you have the latest updates and security fixes for your operating system's default software packages:

sudo yum update -y

Install some essential packages that are necessary for basic administration of the CentOS operating system:

sudo yum install -y curl wget vim git unzip socat bash-completion epel-release

Step 1 - Install PHP

Setup the Webtatic YUM repo:

sudo rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

Install PHP, as well as the necessary PHP extensions:

sudo yum install -y php72w php72w-cli php72w-fpm php72w-common php72w-curl php72w-gd php72w-json php72w-zip php72w-xml php72w-mbstring

To show PHP compiled in modules, you can run:

php -m

ctype
curl
exif
fileinfo
. . .
. . .

Check the PHP version:

php --version
# PHP 7.2.19 (cli) (built: Jan 12 2019 12:47:33) ( NTS )
# Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
# Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Zend Technologies
# with Zend OPcache v7.2.14, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

Start and enable PHP-FPM service:

sudo systemctl start php-fpm.service
sudo systemctl enable php-fpm.service

Step 2 - Install acme.sh client and obtain Let's Encrypt certificate (optional)

Securing your forum with HTTPS is not necessary, but it is a good practice to secure your site traffic. In order to obtain a TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt we will use acme.sh client. Acme.sh is a pure UNIX shell software for obtaining TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt with zero dependencies. 

Download and install acme.sh:

sudo su - root
git clone https://github.com/Neilpang/acme.sh.git
cd acme.sh 
./acme.sh --install --accountemail [email protected]
source ~/.bashrc
cd ~

Check acme.sh version:

acme.sh --version
# v2.8.2

Obtain RSA and ECC/ECDSA certificates for your domain/hostname:

# RSA 2048
acme.sh --issue --standalone -d example.com --keylength 2048
# ECDSA
acme.sh --issue --standalone -d example.com --keylength ec-256

If you want fake certificates for testing you can add --staging flag to the above commands.

After running the above commands, your certificates and keys will be in:

  • For RSA: /home/username/example.com directory.
  • For ECC/ECDSA: /home/username/example.com_ecc directory.

To list your issued certs you can run:

acme.sh --list

Create a directory to store your certs. We will use /etc/letsencrypt directory.

mkdir -p /etc/letsecnrypt/example.com
sudo mkdir -p /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc

Install/copy certificates to /etc/letsencrypt directory.

# RSA
acme.sh --install-cert -d example.com --cert-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/cert.pem --key-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/private.key --fullchain-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/fullchain.pem --reloadcmd "sudo systemctl reload nginx.service"
# ECC/ECDSA
acme.sh --install-cert -d example.com --ecc --cert-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/cert.pem --key-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/private.key --fullchain-file /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/fullchain.pem --reloadcmd "sudo systemctl reload nginx.service"

All the certificates will be automatically renewed every 60 days.

After obtaining certs exit from root user and return back to normal sudo user:

exit

Step 3 - Install and configure NGINX

Download and install Nginx from the CentOS repository:

sudo yum install -y nginx

Check the Nginx version:

nginx -v
# nginx version: nginx/1.12.2

Start and enable Nginx service:

sudo systemctl start nginx.service
sudo systemctl enable nginx.service

Configure NGINX for Pico CMS by running:

sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/pico.conf

And populate the file with the following configuration:

server {
  
  listen 80;
  listen 443 ssl;
  server_name example.com;
  root /var/www/pico;

  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/example.com/private.key;
  ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/example.com_ecc/private.key;

  index index.php;

  location ~ ^/((config|content|vendor|composer\.(json|lock|phar))(/|$)|(.+/)?\.(?!well-known(/|$))) {
    deny all;
  }

  location / {
    index index.php;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    try_files $uri =404;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param PICO_URL_REWRITING 1;
  }

}

Check NGINX configuration for syntax errors:

sudo nginx -t

Reload NGINX service:

sudo systemctl reload nginx.service

Step 4 - Install Composer

Install Composer, the PHP dependency manager globally:

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"

php -r "if (hash_file('sha384', 'composer-setup.php') === 'a5c698ffe4b8e849a443b120cd5ba38043260d5c4023dbf93e1558871f1f07f58274fc6f4c93bcfd858c6bd0775cd8d1') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"

php composer-setup.php

php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Check the Composer version:

composer --version
# Composer version 1.9.0 2019-08-02 20:55:32

NOTE: Composer installation commands will change in the future, so check https://getcomposer.org/download/ for the most up to date commands if the above commands don't work.

Step 5 - Install Pico CMS

Create a document root directory for Pico CMS:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/pico

Change ownership of the /var/www/pico directory to your_username that you should have created before and you should be logged in as this user. 

sudo chown -R your_username:your_username /var/www/pico

NOTE: Don't forget to replace your_username with the name that you have chosen.

Navigate to the document root directory:

cd /var/www/pico

Download Pico with composer:

composer create-project picocms/pico-composer .

Provide the appropriate ownership:

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/pico

Run sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and set the user and group to nginx. Initially, they will be set to apache. Run:

sudo vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

And set user and group to nginx, like below:

user = nginx
group = nginx

And finally, restart PHP-FPM service for these changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart php-fpm.service

You have successfully installed Pico CMS on CentOS 7 server. You can now simply create your own content folder in Pico's root directory, create .md files in the content directory and those files become your pages. 

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