SocialEngine is designed to be installed on a web server with the following basic requirements:
PHP
Minimum
PHP 7.2
PHP extensions:
GD2
cURL
iconv
IntlChar (required for Unicode characters support for mobile apps)
Imagick (ImageMagick) required for gif image support and mobile device image rotation
MySQLi extension
Safe mode must be OFF
Register Globals must be OFF
Magic Quotes must be OFF
Memory limit: 32M+
Sendmail
OpenSSL ENABLED
PHP settings for upload_max_filesize at 15 and post_max_size at 15
Recommended
PHP 7.2
PHP extensions: dom
Optional Extensions
BC Math (speed boost)
JSON (speed boost)
mbstring (required for non-English support)
MySQL Database
Minimum
MySQL 5.7 newer
1 available database
InnoDB table support
MySQLi
Recommended
MySQL 5.7.21 or newer
Web Server
Minimum
Apache-based VPS web hosting
Recommended
Apache-based VPS or dedicated web server
crontab
mod_rewrite (removes index.php, for SEO-friendlier URLs)
Memcached (speed boost)
Disable mod_security/mod_security2
Nginx is not supported.
MariaDB is not supported.
FastCGI is not supported.
It is recommended to disable open_basedir.
PHP 7.3 is not supported yet.
If hosting with AWS, do not enable AWS WAF as it interferes with sessions and login.
If using CloudFront, it can only be used for media files or it will interfere with sessions and login.
For VFS (Virtual File Storage), enable allow_url_fopen .
Some SocialEngine plugins have optional requirements:
VPS or dedicated server - budget/shared servers may not handle a high volume of users chatting at the same time.
FFmpeg (for encoding video) - without FFmpeg, users can still post YouTube and Vimeo videos. Your host can help with FFmpeg setup.
Contact us with any questions you have about these requirements, we'll be happy to help! Most modern hosting providers are compatible with SocialEngine but if in doubt you can contact them directly and refer them to this page.
Picking the right host is important, especially if you have plans for your network to grow large! We've had great experiences working with BryZar (and so have our clients) and recommend checking them out for SocialEngine-powered hosting.