PHP-Fusion vs WordPress. Which one is best for your needs?

When creating and managing a web site, there is no place for errors. The achievement of your site is dependent upon many options you make along the way. One of them, and perhaps the most crucial, would be to select the right CMS/script. Because there are a lot of website building tools, it is becoming a challenging task to find the right ones. PHP-Fusion and WordPress are just two famous and influential content management systems used to construct and run/manage sites. Which CMS/Script/Template is going to meet your needs and match you best? Let’s take a look at a few of the characteristics of these two CMS options.

1.PHP-Fusion is a trustworthy platform utilized mostly by people, who put up their projects for the first time and are looking for a straightforward way to do it. This content management system comes with all the necessary tools and attributes. It is easily customizable; you’ve got total control over the functionality of your site.

Additionally, it’s a sound security system and helpful community, prepared to help you in case you encounter some difficulties. But despite all the features, PHP-Fusion comes with its limitations as well. Although this platform is popular among novices, creating and administering a site with this CMS requires a particular programming skill level. 

2.WordPress is an excellent alternative to PHP-Fusion. WP is strong and extremely popular in the realm of content management systems. It’s necessary to mention that this content management system is a fantastic match for all clients: from novices to site gurus. WordPress gives its users unlimited features and functions. It is famed for its fabulously wealthy plugin library. There is almost nothing WordPress can’t do.

Did you know that Google seems to be in favour of what website template or system that is used on a website, some would describe Google search as preferring some sites over others depending on what website software/scripts/frameworks you would use for your website. Google search loves/likes’ WP, (WordPress), this could mean that your website has more chances to appear at the top of search results. 

PHP-Fusion is often employed by people who start their projects for the first time and need straightforward tools and functions. If you happen to think that you have begun a website on the incorrect platform, there is an attractive solution for you to migrate them across. In other words, you can quickly move all of your content from PHP-Fusion to WordPress. 

Install PHP-Fusion 7 on a CentOS 7 VPS with Apache, MariaDB and PHP

PHP-Fusion 7 is built to run on most configurations, but your server needs to meet the following requirements:

PHP version 5.3.4 or higher

MySQL version 4.1 or higher

First of all, log in to your CentOS 7 VPS and make sure that all installed packages are up tp date

yum -y update

We need to have a LAMP stack in order to run PHP-Fusion, so first we will install Apache web server, MariaDB and PHP.

MariaDB is the default database server in CentOS 7, and it can be installed using the yum command.

yum install mariadb mariadb-server

Start the MariaDB service and enable it to start at boot

systemctl start mariadb.service

systemctl enable mariadb.service

Once MariaDB is installed, run the following post-installation script in order to secure your database server and set a root password

mysql_secure_installation

and use the following options

– Set root password? [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

New, we will install Apache webserver

yum install httpd

Start the webserver and enable it to start at boot

systemctl start httpd

systemctl enable httpd

PHP-Fusion is a PHP based application so we need to install PHP

yum install php php-mysql

Restart the Apache web server for the changes to take effect

systemctl restart httpd

Now we have a fully functional LAMP stack installed on our CentOS 7 server, and we can start with the PHP-Fusion installation.

Download the latest stable version of PHP-Fusion on your server

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/php-fusion/PHP-Fusion%20Archives/7.x/PHP-Fusion-7.02.07.zip

Unpack the downloaded zip archive

yum install unzip

unzip PHP-Fusion-7.02.07.zip

Create a directory for your new PHP-Fusion website in the document root directory on your server

mkdir /var/www/html/mydomain.com

Copy the PHP-Fusion files from the unpacked directory to the newly created mywebsite.com directory

cp -R PHP-Fusion-7.02.07/files/* /var/www/html/mydomain.com/

Rename the PHP-Fusion configuration file

cd /var/www/html/mydomain.com

Rename the created directory

mv _config.php config.php

and change the owner of the PHP-Fusion files

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/mydomain.com/

Next, log in to your MariaDB server as user root and create a new database and user

mysql -u root -p

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE phpfusion;

MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON phpfusion.* to phpfusionuser@localhost identified by ‘YOURPASSWORD’;

MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

MariaDB [(none)]> \q

Don’t forget to replace ‘YOURPASSWORD’ with an actual strong password.

Now, we will set up an Apache virtual hosting directive for the ‘yourdomain.com’ domain name.

Create a ‘/etc/httpd/conf.d/vhosts.conf’ file with the following content

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/vhosts.conf

IncludeOptional vhosts.d/*.conf

Create a ‘/etc/httpd/vhosts.d’ directory where we will put all our virtual hosts.

mkdir /etc/httpd/vhosts.d

Create a virtual host for our domain

cd /etc/httpd/vhosts.d

nano yourdomain.com

and add the following content in to the file named: vhosts.d

<VirtualHost YOUR_SERVER_IP:80>

ServerAdmin webmaster@yourdomain.com

DocumentRoot “/var/www/html/yourdomain.com”

ServerName yourdomain.com

ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com

ErrorLog “/var/log/httpd/yourdomain.com-error_log”

CustomLog “/var/log/httpd/yourdomain.com-access_log” combined

<Directory “/var/www/html/yourdomain.com/”>

DirectoryIndex index.php

Options FollowSymLinks

AllowOverride All

Require all granted

</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

That is it for no panel options. The installation from the command line is now completed. Now, go to your web browser to http://yourdomain.com and follow the instructions to finish the installation and initial setup.

Using a website control panel and manager, you can also install PHP-Fusion on your VPSie (VPS Server) using Softaculous with cPanel and many other free and paid website control panels that have softaculous installed.