phpBB

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phpBB is a very polished and highly extensible forum application. Install is generally painless with its GUI wizard. There are also many mods available in their Mod Database.

“Since its creation in 2000, phpBB™ has become the most widely used Open Source forum solution. Like its predecessors, phpBB™ 3.0 “Olympus” has an easy to use administration panel and a user friendly installation process, which allows you to have a forum set up in minutes.”

Wordpress

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Needless to say, Wordpress is a blogging application. Once LAMP is set up, the installation really does take only five minutes! Unfortunately, there is no GUI wizard like phpBB but there aren’t many steps to make before you end up with a fully functioning blog. Installation of themes is mindblowingly simple.

MediaWiki

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I haven’t used this myself because I have no use for it yet but this is the Wiki software that many websites use including the almighty Wikipedia.

“MediaWiki is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis.”

Joomla!

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“Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable.”

Drupal

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“Drupal.org is the official website of Drupal, an open source content management platform. Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal supports a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.”

Gallery

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Gallery is “the open source web based photo album organizer. Gallery gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own website whether you’re running a small personal site or a large community site.”

Photo Organizer

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“At its most basic level, Photo Organizer is (yet another) a multiuser web-based photo gallery engine. It differentiates itself by focusing on asset management, aiming at the needs of professional photographers rather than the more typical “I need to share some images on the web and blog about it” crowd.”

Let’s begin…

Install Packages

First, install the required packages by typing the following into the terminal:

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin

This will install Apache, PHP, MySQL, their respective modules, and phpMyAdmin. Enter your preferred root password for mySQL when prompted and choose apache2 to be automatically configured.

If you’d like, you can test whether if Apache is working properly by going to http://localhost/ in your web browser.

Letting Other Computers on the Same Network Connect (Optional)

Optionally, if you want computers on the same network to connect to the server you may want to edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf by invoking the command:

sudo gedit /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Then, replace the following line with your own IP address.

bind-address = 127.0.0.1

Configuring

To enable PHP and MySQL to work together, edit the php.ini file:

sudo gedit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Then un-comment the following line. Save and close the file.

;extension = mysql.so

Accessing PHPMyAdmin

Edit the Apache configuration file:

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Add the following line to the bottom of the file. Save and close.

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

Restart Apache.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Testing PHP

Create and edit a file called testphp.php in your /var/www/ folder:

sudo gedit /var/www/testphp.php

Insert the following text inside that file and save:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

Go back to your web browser and navigate to:

http://localhost/testphp.php

The PHP page should display. If a download window appears instead, something went wrong. Try reinstalling php5 and libapache2-mod-php5.

Testing phpMyAdmin

Navigate your web browser to:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

If the phpMyAdmin login page displays, then…

You are done. That wasn’t so hard.

Now that you have LAMP running, why not try some applications? To manage your server remotely, it would probably be a good idea to install SSH.

Note: The root directory of your web server is /var/www/

Source: HowtoForge, Highub