How do I install Flarum on a server?

Flarum runs on top of the LAMP stack. So the first step in getting it up and running on your server is to use the DigitalOcean LAMP One-Click application or to follow this tutorial:

• How To Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack on Ubuntu 14.04

We’ll also need Composer installed. You can get a lot more details about how to use Composer in this tutorial, but for now we’ll just quickly install it with:

sudo apt-get install curl php5-cli git
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

Now we can install Flarum directly in Apache’s document root:

cd /var/www/html
composer create-project flarum/flarum . --stability=beta
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html

We’ll also have to make some configuration changes to Apache. Enable URL rewriting by running:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Then we’ll need to add the following block inside of the Apache VritualHost located at `` It allows the .htaccess file installed with Flarum to function:

        <Directory "/var/www/html">
            AllowOverride All
        </Directory>

Now we’ll restart Apache for the changes to take effect:

sudo service apache2 restart

Next, we’ll need to create an new database and MySql user. Enter the MySql shell by running sudo mysql -uroot -p Then run:

CREATE DATABASE flarum;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON flarum.* TO 'flarum'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

You can now visit the IP address of your server in a web browser to finish the installation using the database details you just set up:

For full installation instructions, check out the Flarum documentation.