This tutorial includes step-by-step in­struc­tions for in­stalling Joomla on an NGINX server.

Joomla is a popular and award-winning content man­age­ment system (CMS) which has won over millions of users thanks to its ex­ten­si­bil­i­ty and ease-of-use. NGINX is a web server which offers high per­for­mance and stability coupled with a stream­lined design and simple ar­chi­tec­ture.

Re­quire­ments

  • A server running Linux (Ubuntu 16.04)
  • NGINX installed and running.
  • PHP version 5.3.3 or newer.
  • MySQL 5.5.3+ or MariaDB 10.1+ (not com­pat­i­ble with MySQL 6+)
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Verify Server Re­quire­ments

Joomla has a number of server re­quire­ments for in­stalling the latest version (3.x). Most up-to-date servers running Linux will meet or exceed all of Joomla's re­quire­ments, but it is wise to check these before you install Joomla.

Check the MySQL/MariaDB Version

To check your version of MySQL/MariaDB, log into the client with the command:

sudo mysql -u root -p

The version number will be displayed in the welcome message.

Image: MySQL-Version 5.5.47shax­lineg­ra­phyShut­ter­stock
In the above example, the server is running MySQL version 5.5.47.

Check the PHP Version

You can check your PHP version with the command:

php -v

In this example, the server is running PHP version 7.0.8:

user@localhost:# php -v
PHP 7.0.8-0ubuntu0.16.04.3 (cli) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2016 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.0.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2016 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.0.8-0ubuntu0.16.04.3, Copyright (c) 1999-2016, by Zend Technologies

Connect NGINX to PHP-FPM with FastCGI

In order to run Joomla, you will need to use FastCGI to connect NGINX to PHP-FPM. FastCGI is included with a standard NGINX in­stal­la­tion. You can verify this by examining the /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params file:

more /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params

This file should read:

fastcgi_param   QUERY_STRING            $query_string;
fastcgi_param   REQUEST_METHOD          $request_method;
fastcgi_param   CONTENT_TYPE            $content_type;
fastcgi_param   CONTENT_LENGTH          $content_length;
fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME         $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_NAME             $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param   PATH_INFO               $fastcgi_path_info;
fastcgi_param       PATH_TRANSLATED         $document_root$fastcgi_path_info;
fastcgi_param   REQUEST_URI             $request_uri;
fastcgi_param   DOCUMENT_URI            $document_uri;
fastcgi_param   DOCUMENT_ROOT           $document_root;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_PROTOCOL         $server_protocol;
fastcgi_param   GATEWAY_INTERFACE       CGI/1.1;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_SOFTWARE         nginx/$nginx_version;
fastcgi_param   REMOTE_ADDR             $remote_addr;
fastcgi_param   REMOTE_PORT             $remote_port;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_ADDR             $server_addr;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_PORT             $server_port;
fastcgi_param   SERVER_NAME             $server_name;
fastcgi_param   HTTPS                   $https;
# PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect
fastcgi_param   REDIRECT_STATUS         200;

If this file is in order, the next step is to add the FastCGI con­fig­u­ra­tion to the NGINX con­fig­u­ra­tion file for the domain on which you are in­stalling Joomla.

In most cases, the domain's con­fig­u­ra­tion file will be located in /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com.conf on Ubuntu (with example.com replaced with your domain name). Edit this file:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com.conf

Uncomment these lines (if the con­fig­u­ra­tion file was copied from the default) or add the following code to the server block:

location ~ \.php$ {
            include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
            fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
    }

After adding the new section, it will look like this:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  example.com;
    root /usr/share/nginx/example.com/html/;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;
}

Save and exit the file, then restart NGINX:

sudo nginx -s reload

Next, test the con­nec­tion by creating a file named test.php in the NGINX document root:

sudo nano /usr/share/nginx/example.com/html/test.php

Put the following content into this file:

<?php var_export($_SERVER)?>

Save and exit the file, then view it in a browser. If the con­nec­tion to PHP-FM is working, you should see text output in your browser similar to:

array ( 'USER' => 'www-data', 'HOME' => '/var/www', 'HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL' => 'max-age=0', 'HTTP_UPGRADE_INSECURE_REQUESTS' => '1', 'HTTP_CONNECTION' => 'keep-alive', 'HTTP_COOKIE' => 'Drupal.toolbar.collapsed=0; _ga=GA1.2.1098258524.1476830307', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING' => 'gzip, deflate', 'HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE' => 'en-US,en;q=0.5', 'HTTP_ACCEPT' => 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8', 'HTTP_USER_AGENT' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0', 'HTTP_HOST' => 'ubuntu.oxnardindustries.com', 'REDIRECT_STATUS' => '200', 'SERVER_NAME' => 'ubuntu.oxnardindustries.com', 'SERVER_PORT' => '80', 'SERVER_ADDR' => '50.21.182.126', 'REMOTE_PORT' => '61760', 'REMOTE_ADDR' => '45.48.69.102', 'SERVER_SOFTWARE' => 'nginx/1.10.0', 'GATEWAY_INTERFACE' => 'CGI/1.1', 'REQUEST_SCHEME' => 'http', 'SERVER_PROTOCOL' => 'HTTP/1.1', 'DOCUMENT_ROOT' => '/usr/share/nginx/ubuntu.oxnardindustries.com/html', 'DOCUMENT_URI' => '/test.php', 'REQUEST_URI' => '/test.php', 'SCRIPT_NAME' => '/test.php', 'CONTENT_LENGTH' => '', 'CONTENT_TYPE' => '', 'REQUEST_METHOD' => 'GET', 'QUERY_STRING' => '', 'SCRIPT_FILENAME' => '/usr/share/nginx/example.com/html/test.php', 'PATH_INFO' => '', 'FCGI_ROLE' => 'RESPONDER', 'PHP_SELF' => '/test.php', 'REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT' => 1478468241.011425, 'REQUEST_TIME' => 1478468241, )

After your test is complete, delete this file:

sudo rm /usr/share/nginx/example.com/html/test.php

Download and Unpack the Joomla Software

Install the unzip utility:

sudo apt-get install unzip

Go to your website's document root:

cd /usr/share/nginx/example.com/html

Download the current release from the Joomla website by using the command:

sudo wget [download URL]

To find the download URL, visit the current release page on the Joomla website. Copy the "Full Package" URL. You can paste it into the command line by clicking Shift + Insert.

For example, to download the current stable release as of this article's pub­li­ca­tion (Joomla 3.6.4) the command is:

sudo wget https://downloads.joomla.org/cms/joomla3/3-6-4/joomla_3-6-4-stable-full_package-zip?format=zip

Unpack this file with the command:

sudo unzip [file name]
Tip

You can use tab com­ple­tion to make this process easier. Type sudo unzip joomla then hit Tab. The shell will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly fill out the rest of the file name on the command line.

For example, to unzip the file down­loaded above, the command is:

sudo unzip joomla_3-6-4-stable-full_package-zip\?format\=zip

After the contents of the Drupal file have been unpacked, set the ownership of the files to the Apache user:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data *

Create the Database

Before in­stalling Joomla, you will need to create a database. Log in to MySQL/MariaDB with the command:

sudo mysql –u root –p

After you enter the MySQL/MariaDB root user password, you will be logged into the MySQL/MariaDB client.

Create a database with the command:

create database [database name];

Replace [database name] with the name you want to use for your new database. For example, if you wanted to name your database my_joomla_site the command would be:

create database my_joomla_site;

Create a user for this database and grant them priv­i­leges with the command:

grant all on [database name].* to [database username]@localhost identified by '[database user password]';

Replace:

  • [database name] with the name of your database.
  • [database username] with the username you want to create for your database.
  • [database user password] with a password for this user. Note: Be sure to give the user a strong password.

For example, to create a user named my_joomla_user with the password Fr4i*Re!2 and give the user priv­i­leges on the my_joomla_site database, the command would be:

grant all on my_joomla_site.* to my_joomla_user@localhost identified by 'Fr4i*Re!2';

Once you have finished, exit the database with the command:

quit;

Install Joomla

To complete the in­stal­la­tion, switch to a web browser and go to your website. You will see the Joomla in­stal­la­tion page.

Fill out the following fields:

  • Site Name
  • Ad­min­is­tra­tor Email
  • Ad­min­is­tra­tor Username
  • Ad­min­is­tra­tor Password (twice)

Then click Next to go to the Database Con­fig­u­ra­tion page.

On this page, fill out the following fields:

  • Database Type: MySQLi
  • Host Name: Localhost
  • Username: The user you created for the database in the previous step.
  • Password: The password for the database user.
  • Database Name: The name of the database you created in the previous step.
  • Table Prefix: Use the default, or specify one if you prefer.
  • Old Database Process: Backup

Then click Next to go to the FTP Con­fig­u­ra­tion page.

On this page, set the following:

  • Enable FTP Layer: Yes
  • FTP Username: Leave blank
  • FTP Password: Leave blank
  • FTP Host: 127.0.0.1
  • FTP Port: 21
  • Save FTP Password: No

Then click Next to go to the final in­stal­la­tion page. Here you can review all your choices and make changes if necessary.

When you are sure that all of the in­for­ma­tion is correct, click Install to complete the in­stal­la­tion.

After the in­stal­la­tion has completed, click the yellow Remove in­stal­la­tion folder button to remove the in­stal­la­tion folder so that you can proceed.

Go to your main website page and verify that Joomla has installed correctly.

From here, you can log into Joomla using the Ad­min­is­tra­tor username and password which you set in the in­stal­la­tion process.

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