Fork CMS: An Open Source Content Management System

There are numerous Open Source Content Management Systems available. Using CMS, an average Linux admin or Web-master can launch their Own websites or blogs in minutes. Mostly All CMS has a cool and pleasant web interface to ease the work of webmasters. Among popular CMS giants like WordPress, there are some other useful CMS exists. The one today we are going to test is Fork CMS.

Fork CMS is an Open Source content management system. It comes with an intuitive  and user friendly interface. It offers powerful apps and killer themes that helps to make your website more shine.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to install Fork CMS on Debian 7 ‘Wheezy’. Though it was tested on Debian 7, it will work on all Debian based systems.

Features

– An intuitive and user friendly interface.

– Packed with cool apps, extensions and killer themes.

– Easy to customize and modify themes.

– Open Source and Large community support.

– Easy to setup and configuration.

– Easy Email setup and blog support.

Prerequisites

We need to setup and configure LAMP server. If you haven’t installed LAMP server before just follow any one of the links to install it.

>>> Install LAMP Server in Debian 7

Make sure that you’ve installed the following PHP extensions.

– cURL,

– SimpleXML,

– SPL,

– PDO,

– mb_string,

– iconv,

– GD2 graphics library.

Create Database and User for Fork CMS

For instance, here i am going to create a database called “forkdb” and database user called “forkuser” with password “debian” for Fork CMS. You can define database and user as per your liking.

# mysql -u root -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 3
Server version: 5.5.31-MariaDB MariaDB Server

Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle, Monty Program Ab and others.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> create database forkdb;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.02 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON forkdb.* TO forkuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'debian';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> exit
Bye

Enable Apache Rewrite Mode

Run the following command in the Terminal to enable apache rewrite mode.

# a2enmod rewrite

Edit the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/default,

# nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

Find the lines,

<Directory /var/www/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride None
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

And change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All.

<Directory /var/www/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

Restart apache2 service to take effect the changes.

# service apache2 restart

Getting Fork CMS

Download the latest version here. I downloaded and saved it in my current directory.

# wget http://www.fork-cms.com/frontend/files/releases/forkcms-3.6.4.tar.gz

Extract it with command:

# tar -zxvf forkcms-3.6.4.tar.gz

Now copy the contents of the forkcms folder to apache root folder. Please note that fork cms can’t be installed from sub directory.

# cp -R forkcms-forkcms-403d720/. /var/www/

Make sure that you have defined the proper permissions to the following folders.

# chmod -R 777 /var/www/backend/cache/.
# chmod -R 777 /var/www/frontend/cache/.
# chmod -R 777 /var/www/frontend/files/.
# chmod -R 777 /var/www/library/
# chmod -R 777 /var/www/install/cache/
# chmod -R 777 /var/www/app
# chmod -R 777 /var/www/app/cache/
# chmod -R 777 /var/www/app/logs/
# chmod -R 777 /var/www/app/config/

Begin Fork CMS Installation

Open up the browser and point it to http://domain-name/install or http://ip-address/install. If everything setup properly, the following screen should appear. Click Install to continue.

Installer - Fork CMS - Mozilla Firefox_001Select your desired language and click Next.

Installer - Fork CMS - Mozilla Firefox_002Select the modules you want to install and click Next. In my case, i selected all modules.

Installer - Fork CMS - Mozilla Firefox_003Enter database name, database user and password. Click Next to continue.

Installer - Fork CMS - Mozilla Firefox_004Enter the email id and password and click Finish installation. You can use this email and password as administrative login credentials.

Installer - Fork CMS - Mozilla Firefox_005 Now Fork CMS has been installed successfully.

Installer - Fork CMS - Mozilla Firefox_006Administrative Console

Click on the link Login to Fork CMS. Enter the email and password that you’ve entered previously during installation.

My website - Fork CMS - Mozilla Firefox_007This is how my Fork CMS Dashboard looks.

My website - Fork CMS - Mozilla Firefox_008That’s all about now. From the here, you can do various things such as add new pages, contents and customize your website as per your liking.

This is how my sample Fork CMS blog looks:

Blog - Unixmen - Mozilla Firefox_009Now your Fork CMS is ready to host your awesome blogs, websites. Cheers!