GetSimple is an open source XML based, stand-alone, fully independent and lite Content Management system. It targets small-site market’s so it only includes features that really needs to maintain a website and remove unneccesary features.
Released under GNU GPL v3, GetSimple have several main features:
- XML-Based
- You can undo almost everyting
- Easy to Learn UI
- Simple Installation
- Simple Theme Customization
- Designed for Small-Site Market
You can learn more about GetSimple from GetSimple website.
Objective
In this tutorial we’ll learn how to install GetSimple CMS on Ubuntu 14.04. We will also install and configure its prerequisites.
Prerequisites
We will install GetSimple CMS in fresh installation of Ubuntu Server 14.04. We also need these application to be able to run GetSimple CMS:
- Apache 2
- PHP 5.x
Update Base System
Before we install GetSimple CMS, let’s update the system to the latest update.
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get -y upgrade
Install Apache 2
After applying latest update to our base system, Lets’s start installing Apache 2 and required libraries.
$ sudo apt-get -y install apache2 apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-mpm-prefork libaio1 libapr1 libaprutil1 libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl libterm-readkey-perl libwrap0 ssl-cert tcpd
We can check Apache 2 service status using the command below:
sudo service apache2 status
* apache2 is running
We can also check whether Apache 2 is listening and on which port using command below.
sudo netstat -naptu | grep apache
tcp6 0 0 :::80 :::* LISTEN 14873/apache2
Install PHP 5
Last component that we have to install before we can install getsimple is PHP 5. We will install PHP 5 and several common PHP libraries.
$ sudo apt-get -y install php5-cli php5-common php5-json php5-readline libapache2-mod-php5
Restart Apache 2 process so the changes will be applied:
$ sudo service apache2 restart
Install Getsimple
All prerequisites is already installed. We’re ready to install getsimple. The latest stable version of getsimple is available GetSimple CMS download page.
At the time of this writing, the latest stable version is version 3.3.13, let’s download getsimple compressed file using wget.
$ wget -c http://get-simple.info/data/uploads/releases/GetSimpleCMS-3.3.13.zip
Extract the downloaded file using unzip. If your system don’t have unzip yet, you can install unzip using command below:
$ sudo apt-get -y install unzip
Extract getsimple using unzip:
$ unzip GetSimpleCMS-3.3.13.zip -d getsimple
Move getsimple directory to Apache directory:
$ sudo mv getsimple /var/www
Change ownership of getsimple directory to www-data user and group.
$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/getsimple
The Getsimple files are ready, now let’s create Apache Virtual Host configuration to serve getsimple.
Configure Apache Virtual Host for http Only
Create new apache configuration file on /etc/apache2/sites-available/getsimple.conf with contents below.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName get-simple.exampleserver.xyz
DocumentRoot /var/www/getsimple
<Directory /var/www/getsimple>
Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/getsimple.exampleserver.xyz-error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/getsimple.exampleserver.xyz-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Don’t forget to change getsimple.exampleserver.xyz above with the domain name that you use for your getsimple installation.
Enable the site using a2ensite command.
$ sudo a2ensite getsimple
Reload the apache2 process so it read the new virtualhost configuration:
$ sudo service apache2 reload
GetSimple Setup Wizard
Open the GetSimple URL. The first step is requirement check, we should already pass all requirements now. CLick Continue with Setup >>
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Input your website name, username for adminstrator and email address.
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If the email sent successfully it will send password for admin user via email, in my case it cannot send the email so it will show the password.
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Our GetSimple site is ready.
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Configure https only site for getsimple
Secure connection is now a requirement for web application. Last step that we will do in this tutorial is changing the connection to only use https. We assume that you already have SSL certificate and private key.
Let’s create new apache virtual host configuration on /etc/apache2/sites-available/getsimple-ssl.conf with contents below. Don’t forget to change:
ServerNameSSLCertificateFileSSLCertificateChainFileSSLCertificateKeyFile
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName get-simple.exampleserver.xyz
Redirect permanent / https://get-simple.exampleserver.xyz/
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName get-simple.exampleserver.xyz
DocumentRoot /var/www/getsimple
<Directory /var/www/getsimple>
Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/getsimple.exampleserver.xyz-error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/getsimple.exampleserver.xyz-access.log combined
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/getsimple.exampleserver.xyz.crt
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl/getsimple.exampleserver.xyz.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/getsimple.exampleserver.xyz.key
# Uncomment the following directive when using client certificate authentication
#SSLCACertificateFile /path/to/ca_certs_for_client_authentication
# HSTS (mod_headers is required) (15768000 seconds = 6 months)
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000"
</VirtualHost>
# intermediate configuration, tweak to your needs
SSLProtocol all -SSLv2 -SSLv3
SSLCipherSuite ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!DSS
SSLHonorCipherOrder on
We will also disable getsimple http only virtual host and enable the new virtual host config.
$ sudo a2dissite getsimple
$ sudo a2ensite getsimple-ssl
The new virtual host configuration need Apache mod_ssl and mod_headers modules. We need to enable those modules.
$ sudo a2enmod ssl
$ sudo a2enmod headers
Now, restart Apache 2 service so it will reload its configuration. We need to restart instead of reload since we enable new module.
$ sudo service apache2 restart
Change get-simple Configuration
We need to change GetSimple configuration to make it working well with https. Open data/other/website.xml
Replace http:// with https://, you can use command below to do search replace using sed
$ sudo sed -i 's/http/https/g' /var/www/getsimple/data/other/website.xml
Summary
In this tutorial we learned how to install getsimple on Ubuntu 14.04.
We installed all the prerequisites and also configure Apache 2 virtual hosts to be able to serve getsimple.
We also configure https settings for getsimple so we run GetSimple CMS securely.
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