The instructions may apply for other versions too.

1. Prerequisitements

What you need to have in order to use this how to

• Basic UNIX file permissions knowledge
• Basic UNIX shell knowledge
• You have a Linux server (Ubuntu / Debian) for which you have root user access and you plan to use this server to host one or several Joomla! sites
• Apache and MySQL instaleld on your server

User setup

2. Set-up an UNIX user on a dedicated server for Joomla! hosting. The user can SSH in the box and write to his home folder, /tmp and /var/www site folder.

We create a user called “user” in this instructions. Replace it with the username you desire. We also use the example site name (www).yoursite.com.

sudo adduser user # Asks for the password and created /home/user

sudo mkdir /var/www/user
sudo chmod -R user:user /var/www/user # Only user has writing access to this folder

3. Setup MySQL user account

Install MySQL as per Debian/Ubuntu instructions.

Login as MySQL admin user (may vary depending how your MySQL is configured). Note that first you will be asked for sudo password, then for MySQL administrative user password.

sudo mysql -u admin -p

CREATE DATABASE user DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_general_ci;

GRANT ALL ON user.* TO 'user'@'localhost' identified by 'zxc123zxc'; 

4. Extract Joomla! installation files

Enter the folder which will contain web site PHP files.

sudo -i -u user # pose yourself as UNIX user who runs the site

cd /var/www/user

wget http://joomlacode.org/gf/download/frsrelease/12350/51111/Joomla_1.5.18-Stable-Full_Package.zip

unzip Joomla_1.5.18-Stable-Full_Package.zip

exit

5. Set file permission

Note that during Joomla’s browser based installation Apache’s www-data must have write access to folder in order to create configuration.php file. We will later remove this access right.

We will set Joomla! files under UNIX group group www-data so that Apache can read them. Certain files are set to be writable. This must be done as root user.

sudo chown -R user:www-data /var/www/user # Make user group to www-data

sudo chmod g+wrx /var/www/user # Read only access to www-data user. Write access for installation, will be later removed.

Now ls -l command in /var/www/user should give you something like this for fil masks:

drwxr-xr-x 11 user www-data    4096 2010-05-28 10:22 plugins
-rwxr--r--  1 user www-data     304 2010-05-28 10:21 robots.txt
drwxr-xr-x  6 user www-data    4096 2010-05-28 10:22 templates

6. Creating Apache configuration

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/yoursite.conf

   ServerName yoursite.com
   ServerAlias www.yoursite.com
   ServerAdmin info@yourcompany.com

   LogFormat       combined
   TransferLog     /var/log/apache2/yoursite.log

   # Make sure this virtual host if capable of executing PHP5
   Options +ExecCGI
   AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php5

   # Point to www folder where Joomla! is extracted
   DocumentRoot /var/www/yoursite

   # Do not give illusion of safety
   # as PHP safe_mode really is a crap
   # and only causes problems
   php_admin_flag safe_mode off

   #
   # This entry will redirect traffic www.yoursite.com -> yoursite.com
   # Assume mod_rewrite is installed and enabled on Apache
   # 301 is HTTP Permanent Redirect code
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.yoursite\.com [NC]
   RewriteRule (.*) http://yoursite.com$1 [L,R=301]

</VirtualHost>

7. Faking the DNS entry

sudo gedit /etc/hosts

# Force this hostname to go to your server public IP address from your local computer

123.123.123 yoursite.com www.yoursite.com

8. Start Joomla! browser based installation

http://yoursite.com

Secure the configuration

sudo chmod -R g-w /var/www/user # Remote write permission
sudo rm -rf /var/www/user/installation # Remove installation directory
# Add write permission to folders which contain writable files
sudo chmod -R g+x /var/www/user/logs
sudo chmod -R g+x /var/www/user/images
sudo chmod -R g+x /var/www/user/tmp
sudo chmod -R g+x /var/www/user/images

9. Setting up htaccess files

Joomla! comes with a sample htaccess file which has some security measurements by having RewriteRules to prevent malformed URL access.

To install this file do the following

sudo -i
cd /var/www/user
cp htaccess.txt .htaccess
chmod user:www-data .htaccess # Set file permission to be readable by Apache and writable by the UNIX user

Then we create a .htaccess file which we will place in all folders with Joomla! write access to prevent execution of PHP files in these folders. First we create htaccess.limited file which we use as a template.

sudo -i
cd /var/www/user
nano htaccess.limited # Open text editor

Use the following htaccess.limited content

# secure directory by disabling script execution
AddHandler cgi-script .php .pl .py .jsp .asp .htm .shtml .sh .cgi
Options -ExecCGI -Indexes

And put the master template htaccess.limited  to proper places

cp htaccess.limited media/.htaccess
chown -R user:www-data media/.htaccess 

cp htaccess.limited tmp/.htaccess
chown -R user:www-data tmp/.htaccess 

cp htaccess.limited logs/.htaccess
chown -R user:www-data logs/.htaccess

cp htaccess.limited images/.htaccess
chown -R user:www-data images/.htaccess

10. Start using the site

11. Setting outgoing email

11. Test outgoing email

12. Maintaining file permission

sudo usermod -a -G www-data user # Add user to www-data group so that it can set group permissions

sudo -i -u user # Login as your UNIX user
chgrp -R www-data templates libraries # Fix group ownership
chmod -R g+rx libraries templates # Set read access for the group

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