Installation

Full manual installation guide for Mini CRM on a Linux/macOS server.

System Requirements

Requirement	Minimum
PHP	8.2 or 8.3
Composer	2.x
Node.js	20+
MySQL	8.0+
Redis	6+ (optional, for queues/cache)
Web server	nginx or Apache
Disk space	500 MB (including vendor)

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/XgeniousLLC/geniousCRM.git /var/www/mini-crm
cd /var/www/mini-crm

2. Install Dependencies

composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
npm ci && npm run build

3. Environment Setup

cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

Key environment variables

APP_NAME="Mini CRM"
APP_URL=https://your-domain.com
APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false

# Database
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=mini_crm
DB_USERNAME=crm_user
DB_PASSWORD=strong_password

# Mail (for email notifications)
MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.yourprovider.com
MAIL_PORT=587
MAIL_USERNAME=your@email.com
MAIL_PASSWORD=your_mail_password
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS=crm@your-domain.com
MAIL_FROM_NAME="Mini CRM"

# Queue (use database for simplicity, redis for performance)
QUEUE_CONNECTION=database

# Session (database recommended for multi-server)
SESSION_DRIVER=database
SESSION_LIFETIME=120

4. Database Setup

Create the database, then run migrations and the base seeder:

mysql -u root -p -e "CREATE DATABASE mini_crm CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;"

php artisan migrate --force
php artisan db:seed

This seeds:

• 3 roles: admin, manager, sales_user
• 22 permissions
• Default admin user: admin@minicrm.test / password
• Base application settings

Change default credentials

Log in immediately and change the default admin password from the Profile page.

5. Storage Link

php artisan storage:link

This creates public/storage → storage/app/public for uploaded logos and favicons.

6. Queue Worker

Start the queue worker to process email notifications:

php artisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3

For production, use Supervisor to keep the worker running. A supervisor.conf is included in the repo root.

7. Scheduler

Add a cron entry to run the Laravel scheduler every minute:

crontab -e
# Add:
* * * * * cd /var/www/mini-crm && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

The scheduler handles:

• Daily task-due reminder emails (08:00)
• Demo data reset every 4 hours (if demo:reset is enabled)

8. nginx Configuration

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name your-domain.com;
    root /var/www/mini-crm/public;

    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";

    index index.php;
    charset utf-8;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }

    error_page 404 /index.php;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
        deny all;
    }
}

9. File Permissions

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/mini-crm
chmod -R 755 /var/www/mini-crm/storage
chmod -R 755 /var/www/mini-crm/bootstrap/cache

10. Optimise for Production

php artisan config:cache
php artisan route:cache
php artisan view:cache
php artisan event:cache

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Verify the Installation

Open your domain in a browser. You should see the Mini CRM login page. Log in with admin@minicrm.test / password.

If you see a blank page or 500 error, check storage/logs/laravel.log.