If you’re looking for a free and open-source solution to manage your customers, you might want to check out FreeScout.

FreeScout is a web-based customer support system that lets you manage your email conversations with your clients and customers. You can also add modules for live chat, knowledge base, reports, and more.

The official Wiki page provides detailed instructions and tips for installing FreeScout on a fresh server. However, if you’re using RunCloud to manage your servers, this process is much simpler. You don’t need to worry about installing and configuring any server software, such as Nginx, PHP, and MySQL. You can just create a web app on RunCloud – and follow the steps in this article to install FreeScout in minutes.

By the end of this article, you’ll have a fully functional FreeScout system that you can use to provide awesome customer service. Sounds good? Then let’s get started!

Step 1: Create an Empty Web Application

First, you need to create a blank web app on RunCloud. A web app is a way of telling RunCloud how to run your website. To do this, you’ll first need to log in to your RunCloud dashboard.

On the RunCloud dashboard, you will see a button that says “Create Web Application”. Click on it, and you will see a form where you can enter some details about your web app.

You need to enter a name for your web app, such as “FreeScout”. You also need to enter a domain name for your web app, such as “freescout.example.com”. This is the address where people can access your website. You can either use your own domain name, or get a free one from RunCloud for testing purposes.

After you enter the name and the domain, you will see some options for the application type and the public path. These are settings that tell RunCloud how to run your web app. For now, leave them as they are and click on “Create Web Application”. RunCloud will create a blank web app for you and show you some information about it.

Step 2: Log in via SSH

You’ll next need to connect to your server using SSH. After logging in, the first thing you need to do is change the directory to the web app root directory. This is the folder where your web app files are stored. You can do this by typing cd <path> and pressing “Enter“, where <path> is the path to the root directory of your web application – you can get this from your RunCloud dashboard.

Step 3: Download FreeScout

After that, you need to download the latest version of FreeScout on your server. To download FreeScout, visit https://github.com/freescout-helpdesk/freescout/releases/latest and copy the download link for the latest release. It should look something like https://github.com/freescout-helpdesk/freescout/archive/refs/tags/1.8.86.tar.gz.

Next, you’ll need to use wget to download the zip file to your server. To use wget, type “wget” followed by the download link and press “Enter“.

For example:

wget https://github.com/freescout-helpdesk/freescout/archive/refs/tags/1.8.86.tar.gz.

Step 4: Extract the Archive

After downloading the file, type ls and press “Enter“. This will show you a list of everything that is present in the current directory. If you followed the steps correctly, your output will look something like this:

Next, you’ll need to extract the files from the archive file. To extract the files, type tar -xf followed by the name of the archive file, and press “Enter“.

For example:

tar -xf 1.8.86.tar.gz.

This will create a folder named freescout-x.x.xx, where x.x.xx is the version number of FreeScout. Inside this folder, you will find all the files and folders that make up FreeScout.

Step 5: Move the Contents

Next, you should move the files from the freescout-x.x.xx folder to the root of your application. You can do this by using cp -r followed by ./freescout-x.x.xx/* and . and press “Enter“. For example, your command should look something like this:

cp -r ./freescout-1.8.86/* .

This will copy all the files and folders from the freescout-x.x.xx folder to the current directory. After that, you can delete the downloaded file and the freescout-x.x.xx folder because you don’t need them anymore. You can also remove the default index.html file. You can do this by using rm -rf and then the name of the file or folder, and press “Enter“. 

rm -rf freescout-1.8.86/
rm 1.8.86.tar.gz
rm index.html

Step 6: Create the .env File

The next step us to create a file named .env.example in the current directory. This file will store your FreeScout configuration settings, such as your database name and password. To create this file, run the following command: touch .env.example.

Step 7: Update the Application Settings

Next, you’ll need to update your web application settings. Go back to your RunCloud dashboard and click on the “Settings” tab. Under the “Stack” sub-section, you will see a option for the application type and the public path. These are settings that tell RunCloud how to run your web app.

FreeScout uses the Laravel framework to run. The public path is the folder where your web app files are accessible from the internet. You should change the application type to Laravel and set the public path to /public.

After you change these settings, click on “Update Stack”. RunCloud will apply the changes and restart your web app. As a result, you will see a new section of Laravel settings in the left menu.

Next, scroll down to the PHP settings section, and look for the symlink function in the disabled functions list and delete it – make sure you delete the trailing comma as well.

After removing the function from the disabled list, click on the “Update PHP Settings” button to save the settings.

Step 8: Create a Database and User

Finally, you’ll need to finish the installation by opening your web browser and going to your web app domain. You should see the FreeScout installation wizard. This is a page where you can enter some details about your FreeScout system, such as your email and password. You also need to create a database and a user for FreeScout.

To create a database and a user, you can use RunCloud’s database manager. You can find this in the RunCloud dashboard under the “Database” tab. Follow our tutorial on creating a database to learn more.

After creating the user, granting them access to a database, and connecting that database to your web application, go back to the FreeScout installation wizard and enter the same details that you used to create the database and the user. Make sure you have selected the MySQL option in the database connection drop-down, and leave the hostname and port as default.

If everything is okay, you can proceed with the installation by clicking on “Install”. FreeScout will install itself on your server and then show you a success message.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, installing FreeScout on Ubuntu using RunCloud is easy and fast. You don’t need to be a Linux expert or spend hours configuring your server. You can leave the hard work to us and focus on your projects.

RunCloud lets you manage your web apps with a simple and intuitive interface. You can create, deploy, and scale your web apps with just a few clicks. You can also monitor your server performance, secure your web apps, and automate your tasks with RunCloud.

With RunCloud, you can save time, money, and hassle. You can run any web app on any cloud server provider, such as DigitalOcean, AWS, Google Cloud, and more. You can also enjoy the benefits of RunCloud’s features, such as:

  • One-click SSL certificates
  • Custom domain names
  • Automatic backups
  • Firewall and malware protection
  • Cron job scheduler
  • Git deployment
  • And more!

Whether you’re a developer, a freelancer, or a business owner, RunCloud is the perfect solution for you. You can manage your web apps with ease and get support from our friendly team anytime you need it. Sign up for RunCloud today and see how it increases your productivity.