How to Install October CMS on Digital Ocean

A Content Management System (CMS) allows developers to build advanced web applications with convenience and ease. It provides several built-in features to facilitate the development of various complex functions. Besides saving time for the developers, it also reduces their dev load, enabling them to concentrate on different operations.

October CMS is one of the leading CMS platforms in the market, having a large community of users around the world. It provides innovative web features that facilitate developers to build enterprise-level applications. Moreover, installing October CMS is quite simple as even beginners can easily start working on it.

This October CMS tutorial presents the complete installation process of the platform on Cloudways. It demonstrates the step-by-step process to install and build October CMS applications on Cloudways.

But first of all, let’s discuss the key October CMS features that make it one of the leading CMS solutions in the market:

Major October CMS Features

Here are some salient October CMS features you need to know:

Simple Templating Engine

October CMS uses Twig as its premiere templating language. It is specifically built to help web designers create stunning web designs quickly. The platform provides complete documentation for Twig so that developers can easily get started. It is easy to use and provides several pre-built features to simplify the web designing process.

Innovative Platform Built With Advanced Tools

October CMS is built on Laravel – one of the most advanced PHP frameworks in the market. It helps to create optimized web applications, with complex core functions. Moreover, the CMS provides various flexible features to customize the functionality of various operations based on the requirements of the projects.

Extensible Platform

October CMS is an extensible platform that allows users to easily extend the functionality of CMS via plugins. You can install different plugins in the platform and use them according to the needs of the application. This makes it quite a handy CMS to build enterprise-level applications, as it provides extensibility to the administrators to customize the CMS as per the project requirements.

Quick Scaffolding

October CMS provides a free Builder plugin that helps users create fully-functional plugin scaffolding. It can manage the database structure of the plugin, create its backend user interface, etc. as per requirements. In short, it helps developers to create plugin workflows in just a matter of minutes.

Manage Applications without Programming

October CMS is quite simple to use, even for non-technical users. The platform provides a unique WYSIWYG editor that helps non-technical people edit and manage images/videos from the dashboard. It also allows users to edit website menus from the same visual interface, enabling non-programmers to quickly understand and work on website basics efficiently.

Why Choose Cloudways for October CMS?

Cloudways is one of the best-managed cloud hosting providers in the world. It has partnered with five of the biggest cloud providers in the world including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Engine (GCE), DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr.
Unlike other platforms, Cloudways provides the freedom to launch and manage applications from an easy-to-understand dashboard. It allows users to quickly set up the server resources including the storage size, memory, bandwidth, and location from the pre-built dashboard, giving users the ease to avoid any technical difficulties.

For October CMS, the platform provides a pre-configured Composer that allows developers to easily install and run the CMS in minutes. Moreover, the Cloudways Platform also provides several performance monitoring tools that help users to monitor the server/application performance regularly.

Major Cloudways Features

Here are the major Cloudways features that make it a leading managed cloud hosting platform in the market:

• Cloudways provides a prebuilt stack of tools called Thunderstack. It comprises all the major web optimization tools like Varnish cache, Redis, PHP-FPM, and several others.
• Cloudways facilitates quick installation of major PHP-based applications, including WordPress, Magento, Laravel, and others.
• Cloudways provides FREE Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates to secure application data from malicious web attacks.
• All Cloudways servers come up with a unique staging environment helping developers to test applications for bugs before live deployment.
• The platform provides several advanced monitoring tools to monitor the performance of applications and take appropriate actions when required.

Installing October CMS on Cloudways

To begin with this October CMS tutorial, you are first required to sign up on the Cloudways Platform. Cloudways offers a free three-day trial period for the new users, and also provides 24/7 tech support to assist the customers in server and app installation processes.

Prerequisites

To install October CMS, you must consider fulfilling the following system requirements:

• Web server compatible with PHP (Apache, Nginx or IIS)
• Latest PHP Version 7.2 or above.
• A non-root user with Sudo privileges.
• MySQL 5.7 or higher/MariaDB Version 10.2 or above

Step 1: Launch a New Server

Once the signup process is complete, to launch a new server. Just select the Custom App from the applications drop-down and then select your desired Cloud provider from the list. After that, select the server size and location as per project needs, and click Launch Now.

Once the server is launched, go to the Application Settings section under the Application Management menu. Change the application folder name to “October cms.”

Step 2: Download October CMS

Now, navigate to the Server Management menu and open the Master Credentials section. Note the login credentials mentioned there, and launch the SSH terminal.

Once you have logged in to the SSH terminal, navigate to the directory where you want to install October CMS and remove all the existing files using the rm index.php command.

composer create-project october/october .

Then, execute the following command to download October CMS.

Install October CMS and follow the prompts.

php artisan october:install

Now visit the Cloudways dashboard, open your application staging URL, and Launch October CMS:

Enter all the database credentials in the given fields, and click Save and Continue.

Now run the

php artisan october:build

Step 3: Validate License Key

A project license is required to install and keep October CMS and plugins up to date, but is not required for your website to work. You can purchase any plan from October CMS’ official website.

Provide the validated license key of October CMS. Click on Agree & Install at the end of the page.

Getting started with October CMS

Once the process is finished, go to your website’s homepage. You will see the newly installed October CMS page there.

You can visit the October CMS backend by adding backend in your URL and you can create your new account.

That’s it! You’ve now successfully installed October CMS on your Cloudways server.

Final Words

This brings us to the end of this article which presents in detail the complete installation of October CMS on Cloudways managed hosting platform. It is one of the most advanced CMS platforms available in the market, and is used by thousands of developers to build enterprise-level applications.

It has a huge user community that regularly contributes towards the advancement of the CMS through plugins, themes, and other components. It is indeed a great PHP based CMS for beginners as it provides various documentation and tutorials to help them get started with the platform easily.

If you have further questions regarding this article, please feel free to ask them in the comments section below.

Shahzeb Ahmed

Shahzeb is a Digital Marketer with a Software Engineering background, works as a Community Manager — PHP Community at Cloudways. He is growth ambitious and aims to learn & share information about PHP & Laravel Development through practice and experimentation. He loves to travel and explore new ideas whenever he finds time. Get in touch with him at [email protected]

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