Connecting AI and CMS: From Vision to Alpha Version with Phoca AI

18 March 2026

In our previous article, Connecting AI and CMS: Building websites with AI and maintaining it in Joomla CMS, we mostly presented a vision of integrating artificial intelligence with content management systems. Today, we are following up on that vision with exciting news: we now have a complete component available in Alpha version!

Vision:

We have successfully removed two major obstacles that previously hindered the process: the necessity to use Node.js and the restriction of using only a local model.

As a result, Phoca AI can now be used on any Joomla 6 instance. However, before you install Phoca AI, we must emphasize that it is currently in Alpha version and has not yet undergone complete security audits. Therefore, it is highly recommended to test it on a localhost environment.

Alpha version:

How to test?

Install the following extensions:

- Phoca AI component
- Phoca AI template (this package also includes the Phoca Particles module)

and copy demo images (optional) - you can copy the images that serve as demo content when generating websites. Please note: this is not a standard Joomla installation package. It is a regular zip archive that must be extracted and copied directly to the root of your Joomla installation (the package contains a directory tree, meaning the images will be automatically copied to the images/phocaai folder).

You can download all ZIP packages on Phoca AI download website.

It is also important to mention that we are just at the beginning of our journey. Since this is an Alpha version, not all the necessary data is complete yet. Whether we are talking about the list of categories, structures, rules or styles. These will be created and added gradually over time.

In the following image, you can see how Phoca AI works:

Generating your first page

If you have successfully installed the Phoca AI component, the Phoca AI template, and the Phoca Particles module, go to Options within the Phoca AI component. There, set the path to your local model, or select an external model and enter your API key. Now, navigate to the Generate section, where you can enter a prompt and let the AI create a page for you.

Recommendation: It is always a good practice to start with a clean installation of Joomla. Furthermore, make sure to clear any existing demo data before each new generation.

Once you create a page you like, you can save it as a preset and load it again at any time (in presets view). All the generated content is displayed via standard Joomla modules (specifically the Phoca Particles Module). This means that if you need to make adjustments, you simply go to the module list, find the respective module, and edit it just like you normally would in Joomla.

Join the Testing and Feedback

We are excited to see what you create with Phoca AI. However, please remember that as an Alpha release, your feedback is crucial for us to move toward a stable version.

If you decide to test this component and encounter any bugs, or if you have suggestions for new features and improvements, please let us know. You can post your feedback, bug reports, or questions in the Phoca Forum.

Thank you for being part of this journey and for helping us shape the future of AI in Joomla.

Running Multiple PHP Instances with LAMP Stack on Ubuntu/Kubuntu 23.10 Linux 2024 (Update 2026)

03 February 2026

The following article was updated in 2026 and added information about PHP 8.5.

Developers often require the ability to run multiple PHP versions in their development environment. This article provides a step-by-step guide on setting up a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MariaDB, PHP) with multiple PHP instances on Ubuntu/Kubuntu 23.10 Linux in the year 2024.

In order to have multiple versions of PHP running simultaneously on Apache, you need the fcgid apache module, which helps us run PHP scripts using FASTCGI. At the same time, it can then run these scripts using different PHP versions. And we do this by creating a virtual host for each PHP version.

Install PHP 7.4, 8.2, 8.3

Prerequisites

Before beginning the installation process, ensure that your Ubuntu/Kubuntu system is up to date by running the following command:

sudo apt update

Installing Apache

Start by installing Apache version 2:

sudo apt install -y apache2 apache2-utils

Check if the Apache service is running:

systemctl status apache2

Verify in your browser:

Since we'll be doing development, we'll set the rights and ownership for the server root folder right away (user: jan, group: jan):

sudo chown jan:jan /var/www/ -R

Installing MariaDB

Proceed with the installation of MariaDB:

sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client

As with Apache, we can check if the service is running:

systemctl status mariadb

Now we will perform the initial setup of MariaDB, mainly setting the password for the root user. Run the following command and follow the questions:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

For example:

Switch to unix_socket authentication? ... Y
Change the root password? ... Y
Remove anonymous users? ... Y
Disallow root login remotely? ... Y
Remove test database and access to it? ... Y
Reload privilege tables now? ... Y

Installing Multiple PHP Versions

And now we will install multiple instances of PHP. There will be two oddities:

1) to avoid conflicting PHP libraries, we will uninstall all the PHP libraries already installed.

sudo apt-get remove 'php*'
sudo apt-get purge 'php*'

2) Add a new specific repository to our system that will allow us to install the latest PHP versions

sudo apt install software-properties-common -y
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php -y
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

After that, let's move on, install the apache module fcgid:

sudo apt install libapache2-mod-fcgid

And proceed to install PHP versions (along with PHP we list various modules here, go through the list of modules and you can delete the modules that are listed here and you don't need them)

PHP 7.4

sudo apt install php7.4 libapache2-mod-php7.4 php7.4-common php7.4-mysql php7.4-cli php7.4-opcache php7.4-readline php7.4-phpdbg php7.4-fpm php7.4-cgi libphp7.4-embed php7.4-xml php7.4-xmlrpc php7.4-curl php7.4-gd php7.4-dev php7.4-imap php7.4-mbstring php7.4-soap php7.4-zip php7.4-intl php7.4-ssh2 -y

Open and edit following file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ondrej-ubuntu-php-mantic.sources

Change string "mantic" to "jammy"

then update the repository information:

sudo apt update

And then we can install version 7.4 or 8.3.

So we run the PHP 7.4 installation again (don't run it if everything was fine before).

And let's see an example of another problem, it may be that some library is in conflict, e.g:

The following packages have unmet dependencies: php7.4-intl : Depends on: libicu70 (>= 70.1-1~).

In such cases, you have to search the Internet for a solution and resolve the conflicts separately, in our case for the library: php7.4-intl we resolve them by reinstalling libicu70:

wget http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/ubuntu/pool/main/i/icu/libicu70_70.1-2_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i libicu70_70.1-2_amd64.deb

And now, for the third time, install PHP 7.4 (don't do it if you managed to install it successfully before).

PHP 8.2

sudo apt install php8.2 libapache2-mod-php8.2 php8.2-common php8.2-mysql php8.2-cli php8.2-opcache php8.2-readline php8.2-phpdbg php8.2-fpm php8.2-cgi libphp8.2-embed php8.2-xml php8.2-xmlrpc php8.2-curl php8.2-gd php8.2-dev php8.2-imap php8.2-mbstring php8.2-soap php8.2-zip php8.2-intl php8.2-ssh2 -y

PHP 8.3

sudo apt install php8.3 libapache2-mod-php8.3 php8.3-common php8.3-mysql php8.3-cli php8.3-opcache php8.3-readline php8.3-phpdbg php8.3-fpm php8.3-cgi libphp8.3-embed php8.3-xml php8.3-xmlrpc php8.3-curl php8.3-gd php8.3-dev php8.3-imap php8.3-mbstring php8.3-soap php8.3-zip php8.3-intl php8.3-ssh2 -y

PHP 8.5

sudo apt install php8.5 libapache2-mod-php8.5 php8.5-common php8.5-mysql php8.5-cli php8.5-readline php8.5-phpdbg php8.5-fpm php8.5-cgi libphp8.5-embed php8.5-xml php8.5-xmlrpc php8.5-curl php8.5-gd php8.5-dev php8.5-imap php8.5-mbstring php8.5-soap php8.5-zip php8.5-intl php8.5-ssh2 -y

php8.5-opcache instruction was removed for PHP 8.5 because it is now included in core.

We can check if all PHP instances are installed:

ls -la /var/run/php/

The fpm service takes care of running all PHP instances. Before we start it or check its status, let's modify the user so that PHP scripts have the ownership and rights of the same user who creates folders on the server and uploads files to them.

Open and edit the following files, replace all occurrences of "www-data" in these files with the user (and group) name, in our case it is "jan":

/etc/php/7.4/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
/etc/php/8.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
/etc/php/8.3/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

Now start the fpm services (restart them if they are running):

sudo systemctl restart php7.4-fpm
sudo systemctl restart php8.2-fpm
sudo systemctl restart php8.3-fpm

By running the following command we can check the status of the service (e.g. for PHP 8.3)

sudo systemctl status php8.3-fpm

Let's enable some necessary apache modules:

sudo a2enmod actions fcgid alias proxy_fcgi rewrite

Restart Apache:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Create Virtual Hosts

Now we will create virtual hosts, for all PHP versions we will create our own file in the folder:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/

we create the following files:

site74.test.conf
site82.test.conf
site83.test.conf

Each of them will contain the following instructions (PHP 8.3 example):

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin Site
    ServerName  site83.test
    ServerAlias www.site83.test
    DocumentRoot /var/www/site83.test
    <Directory /var/www/site83.test/>
            Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
            AllowOverride All
            Order allow,deny
            allow from all
            Require all granted
    </Directory>
    <FilesMatch \.php>
        SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/"
    </FilesMatch>
</VirtualHost>

Once we have these files created and saved, then we enable all the pages:

sudo a2ensite site74.test.conf
sudo a2ensite site82.test.conf
sudo a2ensite site83.test.conf

And reload apache:

sudo systemctl reload apache2

To make sure that our system knows the names of our test pages, we will modify

/etc/hosts

and add this line:

127.0.0.1 localhost site74.test site82.test site83.test

In /var/www/ folder

create the following subfolders for our test domains:

mkdir /var/www/site74.test
mkdir /var/www/site82.test
mkdir /var/www/site83.test

We create them without sudo, using a user that also runs PHP scripts, in our case jan and insert a PHP file index.php into each of them, which will contain:

<?php
echo phpinfo();
?>

Every time we make a change to the settings (e.g. php.ini, etc.) we restart both apache and fpm

sudo systemctl restart php8.3-fpm
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Then enter the following URLs into the address bar one by one:

site74.test

site82.test

site83.test

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can successfully set up a LAMP stack with multiple PHP instances on Ubuntu/Kubuntu 23.10 Linux in 2024. This configuration allows developers to work on different PHP versions simultaneously for their development needs.