Bludit

Prerequisites

You need an active Azure subscription, an SSH key pair, and a VNet with a subnet in the target region.

Standard_B2s (2 vCPU / 4 GiB RAM) is a sensible starting size. Choose a larger size for busier sites or large media libraries.

Configure the network security group (NSG) to allow inbound 22/tcp from your management network and 80/tcp for the site. Bludit serves plain HTTP on port 80, so for production, terminate TLS in front of it with your own domain.

Step 1 - Deploy from the Azure Marketplace

Sign in to the Azure Portal, choose Create a resource, search the Marketplace for Bludit by SecureAnyCloud, and select Create.

On the Basics tab, pick your subscription, resource group, region and size. Under Administrator account, choose SSH public key and paste your key. Under Inbound port rules, allow SSH (22) and HTTP (80).

Review the dedicated data disk on the Disks tab, then select Review + create and Create.

Step 2 - Deploy from the Azure CLI

# Accept the Marketplace terms once per subscription (required before the first CLI deploy)
az vm image terms accept --urn sac1647283583153:bludit-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest
az vm create \
  --resource-group <your-rg> \
  --name bludit \
  --image sac1647283583153:bludit-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest \
  --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --ssh-key-values ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
  --vnet-name <your-vnet> --subnet <your-subnet> \
  --public-ip-sku Standard
az vm open-port --resource-group <your-rg> --name bludit --port 80 --priority 1010

Step 3 - Connect to your VM

ssh azureuser@<vm-public-ip>

Step 4 - Confirm the services are running

Bludit is served by nginx on port 80, which forwards PHP requests to PHP 8.3 FPM over a local socket. Confirm that both services are active and that nginx is listening on port 80:

systemctl is-active nginx php8.3-fpm bludit-firstboot ss -tlnp | grep ':80 '

Step 5 - Retrieve your admin password

On the first boot of every VM, bludit-firstboot.service generates a unique administrator password and seeds the Bludit admin account with it. The service writes the details to a root-only file. Read the file with:

sudo cat /root/bludit-credentials.txt

Step 6 - Confirm the stack and health endpoint

nginx serves an unauthenticated /healthz endpoint for load balancer probes. Confirm the Bludit release and the PHP version, and check that the setup wizard is gone and the site responds:

grep "BLUDIT_VERSION" /var/www/bludit/bl-kernel/boot/init.php php -v | head -1 curl -sI http://127.0.0.1/healthz | head -1 curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/install.php

Step 7 - Open the site in your browser

Browse to http://<vm-public-ip>/. The public site is served to anonymous visitors with the example content that ships with the image. Use it as the starting point for your own posts and pages.

Step 8 - Sign in as admin

Browse to http://<vm-public-ip>/admin, then enter admin and the password from Step 5. The installer is completed at build time, so this is always the sign-in page. A fresh VM never shows Bludit's setup wizard.

After you sign in, the dashboard shows your content overview, quick links to create a new page or post, and recent activity.

Step 9 - Write posts and pages

From the admin panel, choose New content to write a post or a static page. Bludit's editor supports rich text and Markdown-style shortcuts, image uploads, categories and tags. Published content appears immediately on the public site with a clean, readable URL.

Step 10 - Manage plugins and themes

Open Plugins to enable or configure the bundled plugins (TinyMCE editor, visit statistics, canonical links, robots.txt and more). Open Themes to change the public site's appearance or the admin panel's own theme. Both areas support installing additional plugins and themes as zip archives.

Step 11 - Confirm content lives on the dedicated disk

All Bludit content lives under /var/lib/bludit-content, a dedicated Azure data disk captured into the image and re-provisioned on every VM. Bludit's application code links to it through a symlink at /var/www/bludit/bl-content. Posts, pages, uploads, plugin and theme configuration and the admin user database are all plain files on this mount, independent of the OS disk:

df -h /var/lib/bludit-content | tail -1 ls /var/lib/bludit-content findmnt -no SOURCE,TARGET,FSTYPE /var/lib/bludit-content readlink -f /var/www/bludit/bl-content

Maintenance

• Back up your site. Bludit needs no database, so a backup is a copy of /var/lib/bludit-content (all posts, pages, uploads, plugin/theme configuration and the admin account). Snapshot the data disk or tar the directory.
• Add users. Sign in as admin, then open Users and select New user to add editors or authors alongside the built-in admin account.
• Manage plugins and themes. Install and configure extensions from the Plugins and Themes sections of the admin panel.
• Apply security updates. Unattended security upgrades are enabled, so the OS keeps itself patched. Reboot when a new kernel is installed.
• Enable TLS. For production, front Bludit with your own domain and a TLS-terminating reverse proxy or Azure Application Gateway.

Support

SecureAnyCloud provides 24/7/365 expert technical support for this image. Contact sales@secureanycloud.com. Bludit is licensed under MIT. SecureAnyCloud provides this image, and additional charges apply for build, maintenance and 24/7 support.

Deploy on Azure

Launch Bludit on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on Azure with 24/7 support from SecureAnyCloud.

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Need Help?

Our support team is available 24/7.

sales@secureanycloud.com