Chyrp Lite

Introduction¶

Chyrp Lite is an ultra-lightweight blogging engine written in PHP.

Prerequisites and assumptions¶

The following are the minimum requirements for using this procedure:

• The ability to run commands as the root user or use sudo to elevate privileges
• Familiarity with a command-line editor. The author is using vi or vim here, but substitute in your favorite editor

Installing Caddy¶

We will use Caddy as the web server. To install Caddy, you need first to install the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) and run updates:

dnf -y install epel-release && dnf -y update

Then install Caddy:

dnf -y install Caddy

Subsequently, open the Caddyfile:

vi /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Add the following to your Caddyfile:

your.domain.name {
        root * /var/www/chyrp-lite
        file_server
        php_fastcgi 127.0.0.1:9000
}

Save the file with :wq! and then open the corresponding firewall ports:

sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Finally, start Caddy:

systemctl enable --now caddy

Installing PHP¶

To install PHP, you will need the Remi repository. To install the Remi repository, run the following:

dnf install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-9.rpm

Then install PHP and the required modules:

dnf install -y php83-php php83-php-session php83-php-json php83-php-ctype php83-php-filter php83-php-libxml php83-php-simplexml php83-php-mbstring php83-php-pdo php83-php-curl

Next, open the PHP configuration file:

vi /etc/opt/remi/php83/php-fpm.d/www.conf

Go down to the listen = line and set it to the following:

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000

Exit vi with :wq! and enable PHP:

systemctl enable --now php83-php-fpm.service

Installing Chyrp¶

Now, we are going to install Chyrp Lite. Download the latest release:

cd /var/www
wget https://github.com/xenocrat/chyrp-lite/archive/refs/tags/v2024.03.zip

Next, decompress and move the extracted folder:

unzip v2024.03.zip
mv chyrp-lite-2024.03/ chyrp-lite

Set the correct permissions on the chyrp-lite folder:

chown -R apache:apache chyrp-lite/

Set up a data directory for storing the SQLite database:

mkdir chyrp-lite-data
chown -R apache:apache chyrp-lite-data/

Next, set up the SELinux file contexts:

semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/chyrp-lite(/.*)?"
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/chyrp-lite-data(/.*)?"
restorecon -Rv /var/www/chyrp-lite
restorecon -Rv /var/www/chyrp-lite-data

On a client machine, open up a web browser to https://your.domain.name/install.php and run the installation program (replace your.domain.name with your actual domain name or hostname):

In the Database section, select a pathname in the chyrp-lite-data directory made earlier, such as /var/www/chyrp-lite-data/sqlite.db.

Then, complete the other fields, which should be self-explanatory.

Next, click Install me and then Take me to my site. You should now be able to visit a completed installation of your Chyrp site:

Conclusion¶

Considering that WordPress has evolved into a Swiss army knife of web development, it is not surprising some webmasters (the author included) would prefer a lightweight blogging engine. Chyrp Lite is perfect for those users.

Author: Neel Chauhan

Contributors: Steven Spencer, Ganna Zhyrnova