Install Typo3 CMS

Typo3 is a content management system (CMS) that got some popularity in Germany in particular. While the system itself is under the GNU Public License and is available free of charge, there are many companies and agencies that set up, maintain and program extensions (extensions) on the customer's behalf. For those who want to learn more about Typo3, here is a step-by-step guide to installing the Typo3. Make sure that you download the latest stable release as it will provide the best features of TYPO3 for the development of your website.

The next step is to prepare the installation files of TYPO3 on your account. First, extract the contents of the archive that you downloaded from the official website. The current LTS version can always be found in the download section of the Typo3 website.  Typo3 can be installed either without symlink or with symlink structure. Installing without symlink structure is not recommended.

In the root directory for web documents - under /var/www/html/ ( for Debian, Ubuntu) create new directory ; let's call it my-typo3-install.com. In this current directory, unpack the Typo3 Installation package. And another directory called htdocs will be created inside this folder (
my-typo3-install.com ), which will later be configured as the document root - the directory from which the web server serves the website. Finally, the .htaccess file for the Apache Web server is moved from the source directory to the new htdocs directory, giving it its correct name without a leading underscore.

$ mkdir /var/www/html/my-typo3-install.com
$ cd /var/www/html/my-typo3-install.com/
$ tar xzf /path/to/download/typo3_src-7.6.x.tar.gz
$ mkdir htdocs
$ cp typo3_src-7.6.x/_.htaccess htdocs/.htaccess

$ cd /var/www/html//my-typo3-install.com/htdocs/
$ ln -s ../typo3_src-7.6.x typo3_src
$ ln -s typo3_src/typo3 typo3
$ ln -s typo3_src/index.php index.php

Why symbolic links? In case of an update you just need to swap the symlink typo3_src to the source directory of the new version. Sounds great?

Under Debian / Ubuntu the Apache webserver runs under the user www-data with the group www-data. There are several strategies for assigning rights - irrespective of Typo3. Here it is recommended that all directories and files belong to root or their own user, are readable for the group www-data (and thus for the web server) (and additionally executable for directories), and that all others have no access. A pretty restrictive rights management so. The following commands set the rights as described above (to be executed with root privileges):

$ cd /var/www/html/my-typo3-install.com/typo3_src-7.6.x/
$ chown root:www-data -R .
$ chmod 640 -R .
$ find . -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
$ chmod 770 .

Unfortunately, with the last command, we have to change the right again because the Typo3 installer will complain if it can not write to his installation directory; He wants to create additional directories there during the installation.

If you administer the web server yourself, you must set up a virtual host that reflects this association. A corresponding configuration file of the Apache web server for my-typo3-install.com could look like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/my-typo3-install.com/htdocs
        ServerName my-typo3-install.com
        Options -Indexes
        DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
</VirtualHost>

Create this file with the editor of your choice and save it to /etc/apache2/sites-available/my-typo-install.conf, reload the configuration as follows:

$ cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/
$ a2ensite my-typo3-install.com.conf
$ service apache2 reload

For security reasons, for the installation to go through, there must be an (empty) file named FIRST_INSTALL in the Document Root directory:

$ touch /var/www/html/my-typo3-install.com/htdocs/FIRST_INSTALL

Now, browse to http://my-typo3-install.com/typo3/install . First, the wizard performs a check on the Typo3 installation and the web server. If the red error message "/typo3_src should be a link, but it does not exist" appears in the picture, then you have not set up the directory structure with symlinks recommended above and you must ignore the error message.

In order to move the installer to the next step anyway, the button click "I know what I'm doing, continue!" . Anyone who is unsure or wants to do everything right, fix all errors and click "Fixed. check again "until only the button " System looks good. Continue! "Appears.

After that the installation is straight forward. For more details please consult TYPO3 Documentation.

GOOD LUCK & ENJOY TYPO3 !!!