Installation

This installation guide will help you install Polr 2.0, the latest iteration of Polr.

Server Requirements

The following software is required on your server to run Polr 2.0. In the case that you cannot fulfill the following requirements (e.g free shared hosting), you may be interested in looking at a legacy 1.x release of Polr (now unsupported).

Apache, nginx, IIS, or lighttpd (Apache preferred)
PHP >= 5.5.9
MariaDB or MySQL >= 5.5, SQLite alternatively
composer
PHP requirements:
- OpenSSL PHP Extension
- PDO PHP Extension
- PDO MySQL Driver (php5-mysql on Debian & Ubuntu, php5x-pdo_mysql on FreeBSD)
- Mbstring PHP Extension
- Tokenizer PHP Extension
- JSON PHP Extension
- PHP curl extension

Download the source code

If you would like to download a stable version of Polr, you may check out the releases page.

$ sudo su
# switch to Polr directory (replace with other directory path if applicable)
$ cd /var/www
# clone Polr
$ git clone https://github.com/cydrobolt/polr.git --depth=1
# set correct permissions
$ chmod -R 755 polr

# if you would like to use a specific release, check out
# the tag associated with the release. see link above.
$ # git checkout <tag>

# run only if on Ubuntu-based systems
$ chown -R www-data polr
# run only if on Fedora-based systems
$ chown -R apache polr

# run only if on recent Fedora, or other system, with SELinux enforcing
$ chcon -R -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t polr/storage polr/.env

Install `composer` dependencies

# download composer package
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
# update/install dependencies
php composer.phar install --no-dev -o

If composer fails to install the proper dependencies due to your PHP version, delete composer.lock and try installing the dependencies again.

rm composer.lock
php composer.phar install --no-dev -o

Running Polr on...

Apache

To run Polr on Apache, you will need to create a new Apache configuration file in your operating system's Apache configuration folder (e.g /etc/apache2/sites-enabled or /etc/httpd/sites-enabled) or add a virtual host to your httpd-vhosts.conf file like so:

Replace example.com with your server's external address and restart Apache when done.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias example.com

    DocumentRoot "/var/www/polr/public"
    <Directory "/var/www/polr/public">
        Require all granted
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

If mod_rewrite is not already enabled, you will need to enable it like so:

# enable mod_rewrite
a2enmod rewrite
# restart apache on Ubuntu
# sudo service apache2 restart

# restart apache on Fedora/CentOS
# sudo service httpd restart

nginx

Replace example.com with your server's external address. You will need to install php5-fpm:

$ sudo apt-get install php5-fpm

Useful LEMP installation tutorial by DigitalOcean

# Upstream to abstract backend connection(s) for php
upstream php {
    server unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock;
    server 127.0.0.1:9000;
}

# HTTP

server {
    listen       *:80;
    root         /var/www/polr/public;
    index        index.php index.html index.htm;
    server_name  example.com; # Or whatever you want to use

#   return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri; # Forces HTTPS, which enables privacy for login credentials.
                                                 # Recommended for public, internet-facing, websites.

    location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
            # rewrite ^/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/?$ /index.php?$1;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
            try_files $uri =404;
            include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;

            fastcgi_pass    php;
            fastcgi_index   index.php;
            fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            fastcgi_param   HTTP_HOST       $server_name;
    }
}


# HTTPS

#server {
#   listen              *:443 ssl;
#   ssl_certificate     /etc/ssl/my.crt;
#   ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/my.key;
#   root                /var/www/polr/public;
#   index index.php index.html index.htm;
#   server_name         example.com;
#
#   location / {
#           try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
#           # rewrite ^/([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/?$ /index.php?$1;
#   }
#
#   location ~ \.php$ {
#           try_files $uri =404;
#           include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
#
#           fastcgi_pass    php;
#           fastcgi_index   index.php;
#           fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
#           fastcgi_param   HTTP_HOST       $server_name;
#   }
#}

Shared hosting/other

To run Polr on another HTTP server or on shared hosting, you will need to set the home directory to /PATH_TO_POLR/public, not the root Polr folder.

Create the database

MySQL

You must create a database for Polr to use before you can complete the setup script. To create a database for Polr, you can log onto your mysql shell and run the following command:

CREATE DATABASE polrdatabasename;

Remember this database name, as you will need to provide it to Polr during setup. Additionally, if you wish to create a new user with access to solely this database, please look into MySQL's GRANT directive.

SQLite

You may also use SQLite in place of MySQL for Polr. However, SQLite is not recommended for use with Polr.

Option 1: Run the automatic setup script

Once your server is properly set up, you will need to configure Polr and enable it to access the database.

Copy the .env.setup file to .env in your website's root directory.

$ cp .env.setup .env

Then, head over to your new Polr instance, at the path /setup/ to configure your instance with the correct information. (e.g example.com/setup)

This will automatically create the necessary tables and write a new configuration file to disk, .env. You may make changes to your configuration later by editing this file.

Once the setup script is completed, Polr is ready to go. You may go back to your Polr homepage and log in to perform any other actions.

Option 2: Write the configuration file and create the tables manually

If you wish to configure and initialize Polr manually, you may do so through command line, although it is not recommended.

Copy resources/views/env.blade.php to .env at the root directory and update the values appropriately. Do not leave any curly braces in your new .env. You may leave certain sections blank or commented-out to use the defaults.

You may then run the following artisan command to create the necessary tables:

php artisan migrate --force
php artisan geoip:update

You will also need to insert a admin user into the users table through mysql or a graphical SQL interface.