To install BigTree on a fresh CentOS 6 Linode instance, first setup a LAMP server by following Linode's LAMP Guide for CentOS 6.
After completing those steps and ensuring that you can connect to your web server, you will want to enable a few additional key components to your LAMP stack that BigTree needs to function:
- GD Library support for PHP
- AllowOverride support
GD Library Support
To install GD support in PHP, you will want to run the following command from your root shell:
yum install php-gd
AllowOverride Support
CentOS 6's default Apache configuration does NOT allow for .htaccess to run properly. You will need to edit /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and change "AllowOverride None" to "AllowOverride All" wherever it is found.
Restarting Apache
After you have enabled mod_rewrite and installed php5-gd, restart Apache by running the following command from your root shell:
/etc/init.d/httpd restart
Installing BigTree
When you run the install.php script (by visiting http://www.yourdomain.com/install.php) you will see a warning about .htaccess Overrides not working. This is a false negative and can be ignored. There will also be a warning about short_open_tag being off. BigTree should be able to properly override this in .htaccess on CentOS 6, but if you wish you can change this value in /etc/php.ini. Continue your install normally and you should be all set.