Installation

As a package in an existing Laravel app

Getting a license

If you already have a Laravel 10 application, you can install Mixpost as a package inside it.

To install Mixpost, you'll need to get a license first.

Installation via Composer

First, add the packages.inovector.com repository to your composer.json.

"repositories": [
    {
        "type": "composer",
        "url": "https://packages.inovector.com"
    }
],

Next, you need to create a file called auth.json and place it either next to the composer.json file in your project or the composer home directory. Using this command, you can determine the composer home directory on *nix machines.

composer config --list --global | grep home

This is the content you should put in auth.json:

{
    "http-basic": {
        "packages.inovector.com": {
            "username": "<YOUR-MIXPOST.APP-ACCOUNT-EMAIL-ADDRESS-HERE>",
            "password": "<YOUR-LICENSE-KEY-HERE>"
        }
    }
}

To validate if Composer can read your auth.json you can run this command:

composer config --list --global | grep packages.inovector.com

If you did everything correctly, the above command should display your credentials. If that command doesn't display anything, verify that you created an auth.json as mentioned above.

With this configuration in place, you'll be able to install the package into your Laravel project using this command:

composer require inovector/mixpost-pro-team "^2.0"

After installing the Mixpost package, you may execute:

php artisan mixpost:install

To ensure that assets get republished each time Mixpost is updated, we strongly advise you to add the following command to the post-update-cmd of the scripts section of your composer.json.

"scripts": {
    "post-update-cmd": [
        "@php artisan mixpost:publish-assets --force=true"
    ]
}

Mixpost uses Job Batching and you should create a database migration to build a table to contain meta-information about your job batches.

If your application does not yet have this table, it may be generated using the:

php artisan queue:batches-table

Run the migrations with:

php artisan migrate

To make media files (images & videos) accessible from the web you should create a symbolic link from public/storage to storage/app/public

php artisan storage:link

You can publish the config file with:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=mixpost-config

Mixpost has the ability to generate images from video while uploading a video file. This would not be possible without FFmpeg installed on your server. You need to follow FFmpeg installation instructions on their official website.

After installation, depending on the operating system, you need to set the ffmpeg_path and ffprobe_path in the Mixpost config file.

Default folder path: /usr/bin/. If FFmpeg is there, there is no need to change it.

/*
 * FFMPEG & FFProbe binaries paths, only used if you try to generate video thumbnails
 */
'ffmpeg_path' => env('FFMPEG_PATH', '/usr/bin/ffmpeg'),
'ffprobe_path' => env('FFPROBE_PATH', '/usr/bin/ffprobe'),

Or, you can set them in your .env file

FFMPEG_PATH=/usr/bin/ffmpeg
FFPROBE_PATH=/usr/bin/ffprobe

Error Reporting

Mixpost utilizes its unique internal exception handler rather than the default "App\Exceptions\ExceptionHandler". To integrate external error reporting tools with your Mixpost setup, you should use the "Mixpost::report" method. Generally, this method is called from the register method of your app's "App\Providers\AppServiceProvider" class:

use Inovector\Mixpost\Mixpost;
use Sentry\Laravel\Integration;

Mixpost::report(function($exception) {
   Integration::captureUnhandledException($exception);
});

Install Horizon

Mixpost handles various tasks in a queued way via Laravel Horizon. If your application doesn't have Horizon installed yet, follow their installation instructions.

After Horizon is installed, don't forget to set QUEUE_CONNECTION in your .env file to redis.

config/horizon.php should have been created in your project. In this config file, you must add a block named mixpost-heavy to both the production and local environment.

    'environments' => [
        'production' => [
            'supervisor-1' => [
                'maxProcesses' => 10,
                'balanceMaxShift' => 1,
                'balanceCooldown' => 3,
            ],
            'mixpost-heavy' => [
                'connection' => 'mixpost-redis',
                'queue' => ['publish-post'],
                'balance' => 'auto',
                'processes' => 8,
                'tries' => 1,
                'timeout' => 60 * 60,
            ],
        ],

        'local' => [
            'supervisor-1' => [
                'maxProcesses' => 3,
            ],
            'mixpost-heavy' => [
                'connection' => 'mixpost-redis',
                'queue' => ['publish-post'],
                'balance' => 'auto',
                'processes' => 3,
                'tries' => 1,
                'timeout' => 60 * 60,
            ],
        ],
    ],

In the config/queue.php file you must add the mixpost-redis connection:

'connections' => [

    // ...

   'mixpost-redis' => [
        'driver' => 'redis',
        'connection' => 'default',
        'queue' => env('REDIS_QUEUE', 'default'),
        'retry_after' => 11 * 60,
        'block_for' => null,
    ],

Don't forget to run php artisan horizon. In production, you need a way to keep your horizon processes running. For this reason, you need to configure a process monitor Supervisor that can detect when your horizon processes exit and automatically restart them.

Example of supervisor config:

[program:mixpost_horizon]
process_name=%(program_name)s
command=php /path-to-your-project/artisan horizon
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=your_user_name
stopwaitsecs=3600

Schedule the commands

In the console kernel (app/Console/Kernel.php), you should schedule these commands:

protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
{
    // ...
    \Inovector\Mixpost\Schedule::register($schedule);
  
    $schedule->command('horizon:snapshot')->everyFiveMinutes();
    $schedule->command('queue:prune-batches')->daily();
}

Don't forget to add a cron that runs the scheduler:

* * * * cd /path-to-your-project && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Visit the UI

After performing all these steps, you should be able to visit the Mixpost UI at /mixpost.

As a standalone app

If you don't know Laravel, but have basic PHP knowledge and know how to deploy to a server, you can follow these instructions.

You can create a new Laravel application with Mixpost preinstalled using Composer. 

Getting a license

In order to install Mixpost, you'll need to get a license first.

Creating the application

You can create the application with Mixpost pre-installed using this command

composer create-project inovector/mixpost-pro-team-app

During the execution of this command, Composer will ask for a user and a password. The user is the email address of your mixpost.app account. The password is the key to your Mixpost license.

Configure the app URL

You will need to modify the value of the APP_URL in the .env file to your project URL.

For example: APP_URL=https://your-domain.com

Configure the database

You will need to modify the values of the DB_* entries in the .env file to make sure they are aligned with your database.

Then, run the migration to create all tables.

php artisan migrate

Configure the SMTP

By configuring SMTP, Mixpost will be able to send emails such as (password reset link). You will need to modify your .env file.

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailgun.org
MAIL_PORT=587
MAIL_USERNAME=
MAIL_PASSWORD=
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS="hello@example.com"
MAIL_FROM_NAME="${APP_NAME}"

File Permissions

Make sure you have the right file permissions by following this tutorial.

Server configuration (Manual)

Server configuration Guide

Visit the UI

After performing all these steps, you should be able to visit the Mixpost UI at /mixpost.

Deploying to production

Change the value of APP_ENV from the .env file to production.

APP_ENV=production

Debug Mode

In your production environment, this value should always be false. If the APP_DEBUG variable is set to true in production, you risk exposing sensitive configuration values to your application's end users.

Caching Configuration

When deploying to production, you should make sure that you run the config:cache command during your deployment process:

php artisan config:cache

Once the configuration has been cached, everything you change in the .env file will have no effect. To have an effect, you must repeat the execution of the cache command.

Caching Routes

To improve Mixpost application performance, run:

php artisan route:cache

Once the route has been cached, you have to repeat it every time you deploy/update/upgrade the Mixpost application.

Deploying Horizon

During your Mixpost deployment process (update/upgrade of Mixpost or changes some code), you should instruct the Horizon process to terminate so that it will be restarted by your process monitor and receive your code changes:

php artisan horizon:terminate

Using Docker Image

Docker Installation (Guide)

Have a VPS?

Desktop?

Just create a docker-compose.yml file on your server, and change the values (which start with the example_*) with real values.

For passwords, we recommend using strong values. You can use this tool to generate strong passwords:

Required:

Optional:

version: '3.1'

services:
    mixpost:
        image: inovector/mixpost-pro-team:latest
        environment:
            LICENSE_KEY: 'example_license_key'
            APP_URL: https://your-domain.com
            APP_KEY: example_secret_key # Generate a base64 secret with this tool: https://mixpost.app/encryption-key-generator
            DB_DATABASE: 'example_db_name'
            DB_USERNAME: 'example_db_user'
            DB_PASSWORD: 'example_db_password'
        ports:
            - 9000:80
        volumes:
            - storage:/var/www/html/storage/app
        depends_on:
            - mysql
            - redis  
        restart: unless-stopped    
    mysql:
        image: 'mysql/mysql-server:8.0'
        ports:
            - '3306:3306'
        environment:
            MYSQL_DATABASE: 'example_db_name'
            MYSQL_USER: 'example_db_user'
            MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'example_db_password'
        volumes:
            - 'mysql:/var/lib/mysql'
        healthcheck:
            test: ["CMD", "mysqladmin", "ping", "-p example_db_password"]
            retries: 3
            timeout: 5s
        restart: unless-stopped    
    redis:
        image: 'redis:latest'
        command: redis-server --appendonly yes --replica-read-only no
        volumes:
            - 'redis:/data'
        healthcheck:
            test: ["CMD", "redis-cli", "ping"]
            retries: 3
            timeout: 5s
        restart: unless-stopped    
volumes:
    mysql:
        driver: local
    redis:
        driver: local
    storage:
        driver: local

Then execute this command: 

docker-compose up -d

You can connect to Mixpost by accessing the URL address set in APP_URL

Important information

Mixpost uses encrypting and decrypting text via OpenSSL using AES-256 and AES-128 encryption to secure your credentials of services and connected social accounts. That said, we don't recommend you change APP_KEY. By changing the APP_KEY, some functions in the applications will stop working, namely: service credentials and connected social account tokens will no longer be able to be decrypted. You will have to re-enter your service credentials and reconnect your social accounts. For Mastodon, you have to re-create a new app, see the instruction.

Change the API_KEY only if you have a serious reason such as your access to the server has been compromised.