Install Drupal on Ubuntu 18.04

Preparing Your Server

You will want a fresh install of Ubuntu Server 18.04 that is fully updated.

Be sure to reboot to use any new Linux Kernel updates.

apt update && apt upgrade -y
reboot

Wait for the server to finish rebooting.

Since Drupal is a PHP-based application we need to install a LAMP stack first.

Follow this article to Install a LAMP Stack: Install LAMP on Ubuntu 18.04

In addition to the base LAMP stack, we will need to install several PHP modules required by Drupal.

apt install php-dompdf php-gd php-xml php-mysql

We also need to enable the Apache Rewrite module for Drupal to have Clean URLs.

Open the default Apache site configure file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf.

Add the following lines before the closing </VirtualHost> tag:

        <Directory /var/www/html>
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Next, enable the rewrite module.

a2enmod rewrite

Restart Apache for the modules to be loaded.

systemctl restart apache2

We can now download and install Drupal

Downloading Drupal

Ensure you are logged in and sudo as root.

sudo su -

Download the latest version of Drupal (v 8.5.6 as of this writing) using this command.

wget https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-8.5.6.tar.gz

You can get the latest version link by going to the Drupal Downloads Page.

After the file is done downloading we need to unpack the tarball.

tar -xzvf drupal-8.5.6.tar.gz

Move the contents to your web root directory.

mv drupal-8.5.6/* /var/www/html
mv drupal-8.5.6/.htaccess /var/www/html/

Next, we need to update the permissions of the files so Apache can access them.

chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html

We are now ready to create a database for Drupal.

Create Drupal Database

First, start the MySQL CLI.

# mysql -u root -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 4
Server version: 5.7.23-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

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

mysql>

Next, create the database with this command:

mysql> CREATE DATABASE drupal DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

Create a Drupal user:

mysql> GRANT ALL ON drupal.* TO 'drupal'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Be sure to set a more secure password than the one I gave.

Finally, flush the privileges and exit.

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> exit;
Bye

We can now begin the web configuration of Drupal

Drupal Web Configuration

Open a web browser and go to the URL of your server.

http://{your_server}

You will see the Drupal setup wizard.

Select your language and click on the Save and continue button.

Select the profile. Typically, you will select Standard.

Next, click on Save and continue.

Drupal will then verify all the requirements. They should all be OK.

Click on Save and continue.

Drupal will now ask for the database info for the database we created earlier.

Enter the database name and username as Drupal. Enter the password you set earlier for the Drupal database user password.

Click on Save and continue.

The last step of the setup process is configuring your Drupal site.

Enter all the details for your site then click on Save and continue to finish.

You will then see the Admin site for your new Drupal website.

Conclusion

In this post, you learned how to install Drupal on Ubuntu 18.04.

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