Bludit is a web application for quickly creating your own website or blog. It is completely free and open source and complies with GDPR. Bludit uses JSON files to store content; there is no need to install or configure a database. It only needs a web server with PHP support.

Bludit is a flat-file CMS that supports Markdown and HTML code for content. It also includes SEO tools to improve rankings on most search engines and social networks.

Links

• Plugins
• Themes
• Documentation
• GitHub repository
• Forum and chat for support/help.

Prerequisites

An Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS server with a root user or permissions to run sudo, and a DNS record to obtain a certificate with Certbot.

Installation

This article explains how to install Bludit, first installing and configuring NGINX with PHP and a Let's Encrypt certificate obtained with Certbot. The steps are as follows:

Update the repository and install updates:

# apt update && apt upgrade

Install the required packages:

# apt install nginx php-cli php-fpm php-common php-mbstring php-gd php-xml php-json certbot python3-certbot-nginx

Go to the temporary directory and download Bludit from the official account's GitHub repository:

# cd /tmp && wget https://github.com/bludit/bludit/archive/refs/tags/3.13.1.zip

Extract the downloaded file (we include the installation of unzip):

# apt install -y unzip && unzip 3.13.1.zip

Synchronize the web directory with the extracted folder:

# rsync -rtv bludit-3.13.1/ /var/www/html/

Edit the NGINX configuration file for the site:

# vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Change server_name in the file to the subdomain or domain record pointing to the server:

server_name bludit.ejemplo.com;

Add index.php to the index line:

index index.php;

Replace the try_files line with:

 try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;

Add the following lines to the same file to deny access to the directories:

 location ^~ /bl-content/databases/ { deny all; }
  location ^~ /bl-content/workspaces/ { deny all; }
  location ^~ /bl-content/pages/ { deny all; }
  location ^~ /bl-kernel/*.php { deny all; }

Also uncomment the lines to use PHP and deny access to .htaccess. The result should look like this:

# pass PHP scripts to FastCGI server
location ~ \.php$ {
                  # include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
                  include fastcgi.conf;
                  # fastcgi_index index.php;
                  # With php-fpm (or other unix sockets):
                  fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
                  # With php-cgi (or other tcp sockets):
                  # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
                  fastcgi_param HTTPS on;
}
  # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
  # concurs with nginx's one
  #
  location ~ /\.ht {
                   deny all;
}

Change ownership of the entire directory recursively:

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

Also set the directory permissions recursively:

# chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/

Restart the web service to reload the changes:

# systemctl restart nginx.service

Finally, if you want to use SSL, obtain a certificate with Certbot:

# certbot --nginx --redirect -d bludit.ejemplo.com

Once these actions are complete, you can start the installation from a web browser. Select the language:

Then set the password for the admin user:

Once this is done, the installation will be complete and you can access the administration panel:

We hope this article has helped you. If you still have questions about this or any other issue related to your servers on Clouding, email us at soporte@clouding.io. We're here to help! 😉