How to install and enable Redis cache in Joomla

In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to install and enable Redis cache in Joomla on a Linux Cloud VPS running Ubuntu 16.04 as an operating system.

Joomla is a popular and user-friendly open source CMS, written in PHP that allows web developers to create and manage dynamic websites.

This install guide assumes that a LAMP stack is installed and configured on the server. At the time of writing this tutorial, the latest stable version of Joomla is 3.6.5 and it is recommended to install it on a server with:

• PHP 5.6.x or PHP 7.x with mcrypt and Zip modules enabled;
• Apache Web Server 2.4.x with an enabled mod_rewrite module in order to use search engine friendly (SEF) or clean URLs.
• MySQL 5.5.x , or PostgreSQL 9.1.x, or SQL Server 10.50.1600.1 version or higher

Install Redis

To install and configure Redis on Ubuntu 16.04, follow these instructions.

Install Joomla

Download the latest version of Joomla available at https://downloads.joomla.org to a directory on the server and extract it using the following commands:

cd /opt
wget https://downloads.joomla.org/cms/joomla3/3-6-5/joomla_3-6-5-stable-full_package-zip?format=zip -O joomla.zip
unzip joomla.zip -d joomla

Move the Joomla installation to the /var/www/html/joomla directory:

mv /root/joomla/ /var/www/html/joomla

The web server user (www-data) needs to be able to write to files and directories inside the ‘/var/www/joomla’ directory, so run the following command:

chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/joomla

Create a new MySQL database:

mysql -u root -p
mysql> CREATE DATABASE joomladb;
mysql> CREATE USER joomlauser@localhost;
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'joomlauser'@'localhost' = PASSWORD("your-password");
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON joomladb.* TO 'joomlauser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit

Do not forget to replace ‘your-password’ and use a strong password for the MySQL user account.

Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘joomla.conf’:

touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/joomla.conf
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/joomla.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/joomla.conf
vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/joomla.conf

then, add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerAdmin [email protected]
   DocumentRoot /var/www/html/joomla/
   ServerName yourdomain.com
   ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com
      <Directory /var/www/html/joomla/>
          Options FollowSymLinks
          AllowOverride All
      </Directory>
   ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain.com-error_log
   CustomLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Locate the loaded PHP configuration file:

# php --ini | grep php.ini
Configuration File (php.ini) Path: /etc/php/7.0/cli
Loaded Configuration File:         /etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini

Edit the main PHP configuration file (‘/etc/php/7.0/cli/php.ini’) and add/modify the following settings:

magic_quotes_gpc = Off
post_max_size=128M
upload_max_filesize=128M
display_errors = Off
html_errors = Off
display_startup_errors = Off
log_errors = On
output_buffering = Off 

Install and enable mcrypt and Zip PHP modules:

apt-get update
apt-get install php7.0-zip php7.0-mcrypt

phpenmod mcrypt
phpenmod zip

Restart the Apache web server for the changes to take effect:

service apache2 restart

Open http://yourdomain.com in your popular web browser and follow the on-screen instructions. Once finished, delete the installation directory from your server using the ‘Remove installation directory’ button, or run the following command-line command:

rm -rf /var/www/html/joomla/installation/

Enable Redis in Joomla

Log into your Joomla administration back-end at http://yourdomain.com/joomla/administrator, go to ‘System’ >> ‘Global Configuration’ >> ‘System’ >> ‘Cache Settings’ and set the following:

• Cache: On – conservative Caching
• Cache-Handler: Redis
• Platform Specific Caching: No
• Cache Time: 30 (feel free to increase the ‘Cache Time’ to 60 minutes or higher if you do not update website too often).
• Persistent Redis: Yes
• Redis Server Host: localhost
• Redis Server Port: 6379
• Redis Server Authentication: leave empty
• Redis Database: 0

Go to the top of the screen and click ‘Save & Close’.

That is it. The Joomla installation with Redis cache is now complete.

Of course, you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Linux Cloud VPS Hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install Joomla and enable Redis for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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