b2evolution is a free and open source content management system (CMS), just like WordPress and Joomla. b2evolution allows its user to quickly, easily and professionally create an online presence it might be a blog, forum, photo showcase or a website for your business. Just like with WordPress and any other CMS you can create a website without any prior knowledge to HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP but of course you can highly customize it if you have some programming knowledge. What is unique about b2evolution is that it’s very simple to customize and maintain without sacrificing functionality.
This guide will present a step by step tutorial on how to install b2evolution on OpenShift, the only skill you’ll need during the tutorial is your ability to use a web browser.
Requirements
- A free OpenShift account, just go to OpenShift website and register using your email, no credit card is required.
Steps
- After registering; go to OpenShift home page and click on the “MY APPS” on the top of the screen.
- You’ll be directed to your log-in window where you should enter your credentials, you’ll be directed to a new window, click on the blue “Create your first application now” link.
- You’ll be directed to a window, type “PHP, MySQL” in the search field, and select the application shown below in the screenshot.
- You’ll be directed to a new window, in the public URL; type the name of the project/application name (e.g. b2evolution, MyBlog, etc.) in the first space and the domain name (it’s not your real domain name, just any identification name e.g. NickName, YourName) in the second space.
- Under the public URL, there’s the source code field, just copy and paste the following link “https://github.com/b2evolution/b2evolution.git”.
- Leave everything as it’s and click on “Create Application” tab at the end of the page.
- You shall be directed to a new window where you shall find all of your “MySQL” credentials.
- You’ll be directed to the main window again and it’s time to go to your ” website” and start the installation process, to do that simply click on the blue link at the top of the screen (that’s your URL).
- You’ll be directed to the “b2evolution” installation window, the first window will have a warning message just ignore it and click on the here link at the bottom of the window as seen in the screenshot below.
- You’ll be directed to a new window, where you should enter your some information like “password, database username, database password”, you can get this information from step “7”, leave the last field as default.
- In that window, in which you provide your database credentials, there’s a small trick here which is getting your database Host server, the easiest way to do so is to return to your application (the main window where your shall find your database credentials) and click on the small arrow at the phpMyAdmin tab.
- A new window will pop-up just copy the number shown in the below screenshot.
- Paste that number in the database host field in the b2evolutioninstallation, then fill in the rest of the information from your database credentials that you can find in your application, then click update config file.
- You’ll then be directed to a new window where you should select what type of installation you want, select new installation and click on the next tab.
- In this new window you’ll select the sample data you’d like to install with b2evlution and whether your installation is for testing or it’s a final / production installation, I’ve left everything as default and just removed Blog B.
- A new window will pop-up with your admin username and password, write a note with them and click on “go to the front end”.
- You’ll then be redirected to the home page of your b2evolution website.
Congratulations, now you’ve a fully functional b2evolution website for free running on OpenShift.