Installing without SSH

atilkan

I have servers without ssh connection. I can't install Flarum without SSH.

What if: I install it on desktop and move all the files to server. Would that work?

Thanks.

luceos

Yes that is possible, if you also copy the database. You can't update anything then however.

Averell

@luceos, yes you can update, even if the procedure is a bit heavy. Here is the idea (already tested on my web hosting) :

First install

Install the files on your computer (all the job with composer).
move the files to the server
create the database on server
access you flarum directory and configure.

I had only a problem : When accessing the site I got the following Error :

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

The reason was the .htaccess file. Our server (Online.net) didn't accept the following line :
Options -MultiViews
I commented it and Flarum is running fine.

Now how proceed for update ?

Fairly simple :

Update the copy on your computer
keep a copy of the config.php file on the server
move the updated version to the server
restore the config.php file
You are done.
If I encounter other problems, I will update this message.
I am specially interested to see if it will work for an update of Flarum itself (beta5).

luceos

Once extensions or the core have database migrations to run during an update, you might find yourself troubled. Either you put your forum in maintenance, copy the database over and run the migrations locally, then import the updated database and turn your database on again. Or you manually run the database changes in your production database.

Averell

@luceos : Once extensions or the core have database migrations to run during an update, you might find yourself troubled.

I know quite well this is THE challenge we have to face for this type of installation. But the installation page, on this site says :
Flarum cannot be installed on hosts without SSH (command-line) access. Rest assured that we are planning to address this in the future and make sure that Flarum is accessible to everyone.
If this is true, then we have to find ways of addressing the problems.
I don't figure out at which level database migrations are done. I wouldn't expect composer doing that but I may be wrong. Is there any information about that ? I searched the forum without much result. If the migrations are SQL statements (and they should be, what else ?) then you can run them from your computer, no need to have a SSH console on the server for that. The only requirement is to get the information on which migration to do. Then a simple batch file will do the job. Or am I missing something ?

Averell

I made a test installing two extensions (Analytics and Imgur).

On my computer, I run the composer appropriate command to install (or remove) extensions
The modified files are (apart from the extensions directory tree in "extensions") :
- composer.json and composer.lock in the root directory
- autoload_psr4.php and installed.json in the vendor/composer directory
I copy all that on the server (the 4 files and the directory)
I access the forum. It works for a while and opens.
working like a charm

This example is limited, because these extensions don't have a migration directory.

Test with update of the database

I restart the above test from scratch, creating a new installation directory, but after installing Flarum, I removed (with composer) the tags extension. I copy the directory in the server, open the forum and configure. Once the forum is configured, the flarum database has only 19 tables instead of 22 and the tags are not present. Fine.

On the computer, I add the flarum/tags extension in my flarum local install, and install it on the server as described above.
I open the forum, the tags extension is installed and the database has now 22 tables.

I expect that for an update of an extension it would work as well.
I am waiting for beta5 to know if the process can work in this case.

Averell

Hello, @luceos, I was still thinking about installing Flarum on a Web hosting without SSH. I think I found the right idea. Since I have experimented that this type of installation is possible, the second question is : how to make it simple ? I am proposing the following solution :

Keep the basic solution : running composer on the computer and uploading the updated local installation
To prevent the difficulties of composer installation, I suggest to create an installer in Php-Gtk, with PHP5 and composer included so that the user does not have to dirty his hands with that.
The result should be a gui interface which would allow to select the extensions to add or remove, as well as the version of Flarum to install.
Click Install, and the program would run composer to create or update the local install, and then upload the files to the web site.

There is a problem : I can give the idea, I can't write it because it is a decade that I have not written a line in PHP. I program only in Python (and Python-Gtk) now.

Anyway I give the idea. If I write something, I will tell you. I was just wondering if the Flarum team is interested in this question presently, or if you consider it is too early.

luceos

Averell there is already discussion about a web installer and a promise to fix that before stable release. See for instance: https://github.com/flarum/flarum/pull/29

SantillaJun

Averell Thank you!

atilkan

Thanks you guys.
Sorry about late response. I didn't get any mail notification even the mail settings are correct. You might want to look at that.

luceos

atilkan Thanks for letting us now. Will look into it.

menchold

I read you are prepare soon a script for share-server. For when it is planned?