Installing and Securing Mautic Marketing Automation on CentOS 7

When scaling digital marketing and newsletter campaigns, deploying an open-source marketing automation platform like Mautic allows organizations to manage leads, build automated email workflows, and track user engagement without recurring SaaS fees.

In this guide, I will walk you through preparing a CentOS 7 server, disabling SELinux, configuring MariaDB 10.8 repositories, applying database hardening, installing PHP 7.4 via Remi, and provisioning Mautic database user schemas.

Prerequisites

You will need a clean CentOS 7 virtual machine with root privileges, static IP addressing, and a minimum of 2 GB of RAM.

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Step 1: Base System Preparation and SELinux Configuration

Update your system packages, install necessary networking utilities, and disable SELinux to prevent unexpected permission restrictions during web server execution.

# Update system and install utilities
yum update -y
yum install wget net-tools bash-completion epel-release -y

# Disable SELinux
sed -i 's/^SELINUX=.*/SELINUX=disabled/g' /etc/selinux/config
reboot

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Step 2: Installing and Securing MariaDB 10.8

Mautic requires a highly performant database engine. Configure the official MariaDB 10.8 repository and install the server daemon.

# Configure MariaDB 10.8 repository manifest
cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo << "EOF"
[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = https://mirrors.gigenet.com/mariadb/yum/10.8/centos7-amd64
gpgkey=https://mirrors.gigenet.com/mariadb/yum/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1
EOF

# Install MariaDB server
yum install MariaDB-server -y

# Enable and start MariaDB service
systemctl enable mariadb.service
systemctl start mariadb.service

Database Hardening (mariadb-secure-installation)

Secure the database installation by establishing root credentials and removing anonymous access:

mariadb-secure-installation

• Set root password?: Y (provide strong password)
• Remove anonymous users?: Y
• Disallow root login remotely?: Y
• Remove test database?: Y
• Reload privilege tables?: Y

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Step 3: Provisioning Mautic Database Schema

Log into the MariaDB prompt and create a dedicated database and user schema for Mautic:

mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE mautic;
GRANT ALL ON mautic.* TO 'mauticuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'Randompassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

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Step 4: Installing Apache and PHP 7.4 via Remi Repository

Mautic relies on PHP and extensive XML, IMAP, and database extensions. Configure the Remi repository and install PHP 7.4 alongside Apache.

# Install Apache web server
yum install httpd -y
systemctl enable httpd
systemctl start httpd

# Enable Remi repository for PHP 7.4
yum install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm -y

# Install PHP 7.4 and required Mautic extensions
yum install -y php74-php.x86_64 php74-php-xml php74-php-pdo php74-php-mcrypt php74-php-imap php74-php-posix php74-php-intl php74-php-mysqli php74-php-pear php74-php-curl php74-php-gd php74-php-pecl-zip.x86_64 php74-php-bcmath.x86_64 php74-php-mbstring.x86_64

Create a symbolic link to ensure the PHP binary is available system-wide:

ln -s /opt/remi/php74/root/bin/php /usr/bin/php
php -v

References

• Mautic Official Documentation