Troubleshooting ADDON DOMAIN Install on home/maindomain/addondomain/flarum

Papa

Getting only HTTP error 500 on fresh install

<UPDATE: SEE LAST POST FOR CORRECT PROCEDURE>

Thanks to the dedicated people who donate time to helping the community here - I appreciate you. I read the install doc and searched this forum and Google before posting. I read and understood as much as I could.

Shared hosting account on mochahost (includes Terminal access in cPanel). PHP ver 7.4.
Target domain for the Flarum forum is an "addon domain".

File structure looks like this:
/home/maindomain/addondomain1.com/

Root directory for addondomain1.com is set to the above in cPanel|Domains and folder permission(s) are set to 775.

After successful install from /addondomain1.com folder using command prompt Terminal file structure looks like this:
/home/maindomain/addondomain/flarum/public/
/home/maindomain/addondomain/flarum/storage/
/home/maindomain/addondomain/flarum/vendor/

I copied the contents of
/home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum/public/
into
/home/maindomain/addondomain.com/

I then edited the /home/maindomain/addondomain.com/index.php file thus:

<?php

/*
 * This file is part of Flarum.
 *
 * For detailed copyright and license information, please view the
 * LICENSE file that was distributed with this source code.
 */

$site = require 'home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum/site.php';

/*
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Accept incoming HTTP requests
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Every HTTP request pointed to the web server that cannot be served by simply
| responding with one of the files in the "public" directory will be sent to
| this file. Now is the time to boot up Flarum's internal HTTP server, which
| will try its best to interpret the request and return the appropriate
| response, which could be a JSON document (for API responses) or a lot of HTML.
|
*/

$server = new Flarum\Http\Server($site);
$server->listen();

I also edited the /home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum/site.php file thus:

<?php

/*
 * This file is part of Flarum.
 *
 * For detailed copyright and license information, please view the
 * LICENSE file that was distributed with this source code.
 */

/*
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Load the autoloader
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| First, let's include the autoloader, which is generated automatically by
| Composer (PHP's package manager) after installing our dependencies.
| From now on, all classes in our dependencies will be usable without
| explicitly loading any files.
|
*/

require 'home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum/vendor/autoload.php';

/*
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Configure the site
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| A Flarum site represents your local installation of Flarum. It can be
| configured with a bunch of paths:
|
| - The *base path* is Flarum's root directory and contains important files
|   such as config.php and extend.php.
| - The *public path* is the directory that serves as document root for the
|   web server. Files in this place are accessible to the public internet.
|   This is where assets such as JavaScript files or CSS stylesheets need to
|   be stored in a default install.
| - The *storage path* is a place for Flarum to store files it generates during
|   runtime. This could be caches, session data or other temporary files.
|
| The fully configured site instance is returned to the including script, which
| then uses it to boot up the Flarum application and e.g. accept web requests.
|
*/

return Flarum\Foundation\Site::fromPaths([
    'base' => 'home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum',
    'public' => 'home/maindomain/addondomain.com',
    'storage' => 'home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum/storage',
]);

I get a HTTP error 500 only.

I changed the line above by adding a "/" at the end ->

     'public' => 'home/maindomain/addondomain.com/',

and now I get the following:

Warning: require(home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum/site.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/maindomain/addondomain.com/index.php on line 10

Warning: require(home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum/site.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/maindomain/addondomain.com/index.php on line 10

Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required 'home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum/site.php' (include_path='.:/opt/alt/php74/usr/share/pear') in /home/maindomain/addondomain.com/index.php on line 10

What am I doing wrong?

Kind Regards,
Papa

Papa

I made it to the INSTALL PAGE! HURRAY!!!

<UPDATE:THIS DIDN'T WORK - SEE CORRECT PROCEDURE IN THE NEXT POST>

Here's How.

I had to redo the AddOn domain (in cPanel) to remove any uppercase characters and the same for the target subfolder, e.g. from this:

/home/maindomain/AddOndomain.com/flarum

to this:

/home/maindomain/addondomain.com/flarum

THEN - I had to fiddle around with line 10 in index.php, it now works and reads thus,

$site = require './flarum/site.php';

I hope this thread helps someone else.

Kind Regards,
Papa

Papa

So, I thought I had it solved, but when I installed extensions, they didn't work. They appeared to be installed and enabled, but were not functioning.

Back to square one.

I deleted all the files in my /addondomain folder and started from scratch with the installation document provided here by Flarum. It is now installed, along with the extensions and running well.

Some notes that might help others with Installation on an addon domain:

1) Avoid any capital letters in your addon domain name or unix directories.

2) The line in the installation that reads:

composer create-project flarum/flarum .

Note the dot at the end is not a typo, it is important to include it with a space preceding it.

3) Be certain your domain is pointing at the folder /addondomain/public

Sometimes this is called the root folder, the webroot or Document Root. This is not the same as a redirect. Find Domains or Addon Domains under cPanel, and look for Document Root and point it to the public folder of your flarum installation. Flarum is set to run from this folder by default and it keeps the security issues simpler.

4) Use lower case on the SQL database usernames , database names, etc. Pay close attention to the database settings. Be sure you are creating a new and unique string for each of these, if you've installed before then delete the old databases in cPanel first and still use all new names so you avoid SQL issues.

5) Start with a clean/empty installation folder.
I tried a clean install on a brand new domain I registered and setup last night. It failed with an error on installation because the folder wasn't empty. cPanel had put a couple of folders in there, cgi-bin and a hidden one, when I created the addondomain.

I deleted all the files in the /home/maindomain/addondomain folder and did a clean flarum installation from the terminal as described in the Flarum installation document (and as noted above).

It installed perfectly and is up and running correctly.

I hope this helps anyone who is having troubling setting up Flarum for the first time, especially on shared hosting as an addondomain. Most of this is a repeat of the Installation instructions, but I tried to add a few points that might help people who are getting stuck. The installation is pretty simple if you follow the instructions exactly.

Shout out to mochhost, my shared hosting, for still using cPanel, having composer installed and terminal/SSH available, etc.

Checkout FigRoots.com if you wanna see where my Flarum forum is at now.

Kind Regards All,
Papa
: : :