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Installing Drupal

Assumptions

These directions assume that you already have ssh access to a server with a LAMP stack, that you have installed Composer and that you are comfortable working on the command line.

Create a new database and grant user privileges

  1. Do mysql -u USER -p to get to the mysql prompt. Replace USER with your MySQL admin user name.
  2. Create the database: CREATE DATABASE databasename; (replace databasebame with the name of your database).
  3. Create a user for the database: CREATE USER 'databaseuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; (replace databaseuser and password with something)
  4. Grant privileges: GRANT ALL ON database.* TO 'databaseuser'@'localhost';
  5. FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
  6. exit

Set Up the Site's Root Directory

  1. Navigate to the directory that Apache uses for its webroot. On Ubuntu and RHEL that's cd /var/www/html
  2. Make a new directory for your site: sudo mkdir my_site_name_dir
  3. Change the owner of the directory sudo chown YOURUSERNAME:apache my_site_name_dir (note that the Apache user is sometimes www-data)

Use composer to create your drupal project:

composer create-project drupal/recommended-project my_site_name_dir

Enable Version Control

  1. Change into the site's directory: cd my_site_name
  2. Initialize a git repository: git init
  3. Add a .gitignore file (see my post on this subject https://sjhuskey.info/drupal/gitignore-for-drupal/)
  4. Add the current files and commit.

Set up the files directory and give it the correct permissions:

  1. cd my_site_name_dir/web/sites/default
  2. sudo mkdir files
  3. sudo chown YOURUSERNAME:apache files
  4. sudo chmod a+w files

Set up the private files directory:

  1. Navigate to the site's root (e.g., cd my_site_name_dir)
  2. Make the private files directory: sudo mkdir private. Give the directory the correct owner and permissions: sudo chown apache:apache private && sudo chmod a+w private

Create the settings file

  1. Navigate to my_site_name_dir/web/sites/default
  2. Copy the default settings file: cp default.settings.php settings.php
  3. Change the ownership of the settings.php file: sudo chown YOURUSERNAME:apache settings.php
  4. TEMPORARILY change the permissions on the settings.php file: sudo chmod ug=rwx,o=rw settings.php. You'll change the permissions again after the next step.

Run the installer script

Run install by going to the address of the site in a browser. See https://www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/install-run.html for more information.

  1. Choose language: Select your language of preference and click "Save and Continue."
  2. Choose profile: Select the standard profile and click "Save and Continue."
  3. Set up database: Enter the credentials for the database you created earlier. Click "Save and Continue."
  4. Watch the installer run!
  5. Configure site: fill out the form. This creates user number one, which is the admin account for the site.

Move the configuration directory

The installer script created a configuration directory at web/sites/default/files, but you should move it to the root of the installation for security purposes.

  1. cd web/sites/default/files
  2. Make note of the name of the configuration directory and save it because you'll need it a couple more times. The directory name will look something like config_M_Mc2eRHKbh5P0w5JnsFmEhpio44nLb0enNXYIH6v4VtwvzqRnvuXpeyMNr4o2OeEPh07BvYCg
  3. Copy the config directory to the root of the installation: sudo cp -r config_HASH ../../../../config_HASH && sudo chown sjhuskey:sjhuskey ../../../../config_HASH && sudo rm -rf config_HASH (where HASH is the string appended to the config directory's name).

Finish setting up the settings file

Navigate to my_site_name_dir/web/sites/default if you aren't already there.

Edit the settings file

Use your favorite text editor (e.g., nano, vi) to make these changes to settings.php:

  1. Search for 'trusted_host_patterns'. Insert your top-level domain into the trusted_host_patterns variable:
$settings['trusted_host_patterns'] = [
    '^your\.domain\.name\.org$',
];
  1. Search 'file_private_path', then edit:
$settings['file_private_path'] = $app_root . '/../private';
  1. Scroll to the end of the file. You'll see a block that defines your database connection. If you ever change the password for your database user, you'll need to change it here, too.
$databases['migrate']['default'] = [
  'database' => 'YOUR-DATABASE-NAME',
  'username' => 'YOUR-DATABASE-USER-NAME',
  'password' => 'YOUR-DATABASE-USER-NAME-PASSWORD',
  'prefix' => '',
  'host' => 'localhost',
  'port' => '3306',
  'namespace' => 'Drupal\\Core\\Database\\Driver\\mysql',
  'driver' => 'mysql',
];
  1. The last line of the settings file should be for the config_sync_directory, but it's no longer accurate after your moved the directory earlier, so edit it like so (replacing HASH with the hash for your config directory):
$settings['config_sync_directory'] = $app_root . '/../config_HASH';
  1. CHANGE THE PERMISSIONS on the settings.php file: sudo chmod ug=r,o=-rwx settings.php (doing ls -la after this should show that the permissions on settings.php are -r--r-----)
  2. CHANGE THE PERMISSIONS on the files directory: sudo chmod a=rwx files

Install drush

  1. composer require drush/drush && composer global require drush/drush && composer global update
  2. So that you can call drush just by typing drush, install "Drush Launcher":
    a. Navigate to your user's home directory: cd ~
    b. wget -O drush.phar https://github.com/drush-ops/drush-launcher/releases/latest/download/drush.phar
    c. chmod +x drush.phar
    d. sudo mv drush.phar /usr/local/bin/drush
  3. Navigate back to your site's root (e.g., cd /var/www/html/my_site_name_dir).
  4. Clear your site's cache: drush cr

Secure the Private Files Directory

In the site's UI, navigate to admin/config/media/file-system and click 'Save configuation' to generate the .htaccess file that will protect that directory. Back in the terminal, navigate to the private files directory and do ls -la to verify that the .htaccess file was created.

Install Contributed Modules

To enhance the functionality of the site with contributed modules, you need to know the module's directory name on drupal.org. To find the module's directory name, look at the end of the module's URL. For example, the Views module is at https://www.drupal.org/project/feeds. The directory name is just feeds.

To install a module, use composer: composer require drupal/module_directory_name.

Then enable the module using drush: drush en -y module_directory_name

To uninstall a module:

  1. drush pm-uninstall module_directory_name
  2. composer remove drupal/module_directory_name

Here are the modules that I install on most of my sites:

  • devel: indispensible for developing themes and modules
  • feeds: import data from CSV or other formats
  • google_analytics: the name speaks for itself :-)
  • honeypot: excellent for keeping the bots away
  • metatag: facilitates the publication of metadata for your site
  • pathauto: automatically generates paths for your nodes
  • redirect: again, speaks for itself
  • search_api: more robust search than the search that comes with Drupal; also essential if you want to work with a Solr or Elastic Search instance)
  • token: allows the use of variables in certain situations, making it much easier to apply changes globally, etc.
  • token_filter: filter your tokens by context
  • views_bulk_operations: allows you to edite multiple nodes all at once, among other things
  • views_data_export: export your data in CSV, JSON, and other formats
Photo by Rubaitul Azad on Unsplash

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