Magento is one of the most powerful and widely-used e-commerce platforms. With its many capabilities and adaptability, it’s a great option for companies wishing to build a feature-rich online store. This tutorial will assist you in setting up Magento on a dedicated Ubuntu server.

Major Advantages of Magento

Flexibility

Open Source: Being open source, Magento allows for extensive customization and flexibility. Developers can modify the code to fit specific business needs. 

Scalability

Magento can handle small to large-scale businesses, making it suitable for startups as well as established enterprises. It is designed to manage thousands of products and high traffic volumes efficiently. 

SEO Friendly

Magento offers built-in SEO tools to optimize product pages, URLs, and meta tags, helping improve search engine rankings. 

Mobile-Friendly

Magento themes and templates are designed to be mobile-friendly, ensuring a seamless shopping experience on various devices. It supports mobile commerce capabilities, making it easier to reach customers on smartphones and tablets. 

Security

Magento offers robust security features, including secure payment gateways, data encryption, and compliance with security standards. Also, it has frequent updates and security patches to address vulnerabilities and enhance the platform’s security.

Installation Steps

Now let’s see how to install Magento on a dedicated Ubuntu server. 

Step 1 – Updating System Packages

Update the System Packages using:

sudo apt update 

sudo apt upgrade -y

Step 2 – Install LAMP Stack

Here we are installing Apache web server, MySQL for database management, PHP, and its extensions. 

sudo apt install apache2 -y sudo apt install mysql-server -y sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-xml php-mbstring php-zip php-gd php-curl php-intl php-soap php-bcmath -y

Apache: sudo apt install apache2 -y

MySQL: sudo apt install mysql-server -y

PHP and its extensions: sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-xml php-mbstring php-zip php-gd php-curl php-intl php-soap -y

Step 3 – Configure Apache 

Before we start configuring, we need to enable Apache2 to start automatically using the following command:

sudo systemctl enable apache2.service

Confirm that the apache is running and enabled using 

sudo systemctl status apache2.service

Now let’s add a new virtual host configuration for Magento. Create a file named magento.conf in the directory /etc/apache2/sites-available/

sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/magento.conf

Copy and paste the following line into the file. 

Replace “example.com” with your domain name. You can also give your preferred server admin name.

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerAdmin admin@example.com
	DocumentRoot /var/www/html/magento
	ServerName example.com
	ServerAlias www.example.com
	<Directory /var/www/html/magento>
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
		AllowOverride All
		Require all granted
	</Directory>
	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Enable the new virtual host and rewrite module: 

sudo a2ensite magento.conf 

sudo a2enmod rewrite 

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 4 – Configure MySQL 

Restart MySQL and enable it just to make sure it starts and operates when you reboot the server: 

sudo systemctl restart mysql.service 

sudo systemctl enable mysql.service

Secure the installation 

sudo mysql_secure_installation 

When prompted answer the following like:

• Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD component? [Y/N] – Y
• Remove anonymous users? [Y/N] – Y
• Disallow root login remotely? [Y/N] – Y
• Remove test database and access to it? [Y/N] – Y
• Reload privilege tables now? [Y/N] – Y

Now enter into MySQL CLI using: 

sudo mysql -u root -p 

Create a database for Magento: 

CREATE DATABASE magentodb;

Create a new user for the database

CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';

Please make sure that “your_password” and “username” are replaced with the appropriate ones. Grant privileges using:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON magentodb.* TO 'username'@'localhost';

Flush privileges and exit:

FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT;

Step 5 – Install Composer

Install Composer and move the composer executable to a worldwide directory that is reachable from anywhere:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Step 6 – Download and install Magento

Before downloading Magento to the server, access your Adobe Commerce account (create an account if you don’t have any). Go to My Profile >> Access Keys 

If there are no keys present, create a new key. After that, you will be able to see a public key and a private key. Then navigate to the web root directory. 

cd /var/www/html

And run the following command to download Magento: 

sudo composer create-project --repository=https://repo.magento.com/ magento/project-community-edition magento

Note: If you face an error similar to “Do not run Composer as root/super user!” 

Create a new user and switch to it:

sudo adduser username 

sudo usermod -aG sudo username 

sudo chown -R username:username /var/www/html 

su - username

Make sure to replace the “username”.

Next, you can run the command to download Magento. You can use the public key from your Adobe Commerce account as the username and the private key as the password.

Step 7 – Install Elasticsearch 

Use the following commands to install Elasticsearch 

sudo apt update sudo apt install apt-transport-https openjdk-11-jdk -y wget -qO - https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/elasticsearch-keyring.gpg echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/elasticsearch-keyring.gpg] https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-7.x.list sudo apt update sudo apt install elasticsearch -y

After completing the installation, start and enable Elasticsearch. 

sudo systemctl start elasticsearch 

sudo systemctl enable elasticsearch

Check the status using the command 

sudo systemctl status elasticsearch

Step 8 – Security Permissions

Adjust the permissions for security. Use the following commands:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/magento sudo find /var/www/html/magento -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \; sudo find /var/www/html/magento -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \; sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/magento/var /var/www/html/magento/pub/static /var/www/html/magento/generated /var/www/html/magento/pub/media

Step 9 – Run the Magento setup script

Run the Magento setup script, making sure to replace the placeholder details with your specific information:

sudo php bin/magento setup:install --base-url=http://example.com/ --db-host=localhost --db-name=magentodb --db-user=username --db-password=your_password --admin-firstname=Admin --admin-lastname=User --admin-email=admin@example.com --admin-user=admin --admin-password=admin123 --language=en_US --currency=EUR --timezone=Europe/Paris --use-rewrites=1

The installation is now complete. You can access the website by visiting http://yourdomain.com in your web browser. To reach the admin dashboard, go to http://yourdomain.com/admin.

Conclusion 

The process of installing Magento on your dedicated Ubuntu server is methodical and starts with setting up the server environment and making sure it satisfies all prerequisites. The Magento package must be downloaded and extracted before the databases can be created and installed. This is done after Apache, MySQL, and PHP have been installed and configured. Ongoing seamless operation is ensured via routine backups, updates, and monitoring. With this configuration, your Magento store on Ubuntu guarantees a safe and scalable platform, and it also gives you the ability to offer a flawless shopping experience while keeping control over the expansion and performance of your e-commerce company.