How To Install WordPress with LAMP on Ubuntu 18.04

How to install WordPress on Ubuntu 18.04 using a LAMP stack

In this tutorial, I will show you how to install WordPress with LAMP on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Prerequisites for installing WordPress on Ubuntu 18.04

Before we get started, you’ll need to have the following set up:

Step 1: Create a database for WordPress user

WordPress ships a bundle of numerous files and those files need to be stored in a database.

So, your first step towards installing WordPress is to setup MySQL database to handle these files.

To do this, let’s log in to MySQL as a root user, using the command:

mysql -u root -p

You’ll then prompted for the password that you set during the set-up of MySQL database system.

Once logged in, you need to create a new database that will accommodate WordPress files during and after the installation process. You can name it whatever you wish, but to keep things simple, we will call it wordpressdb in this guide.

To create the database, run the following command.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE wordpressdb;

NOTE: Always remember to terminate MySQL statements with a semi-colon “;”

With the database in place, you need to create a new MySQL user account that will have exclusive access to the database.

Let’s also grant the user full access to the database and set a strong password. For this guide, we will create a user
called admin-user.

To do that, execute the following command

mysql> GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO 'admin-suser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD';

NOTE: Remember to replace the PASSWORD string with a strong password.

At this point, we’ve created a database and a user account specifically for WordPress.

To apply the changes in MySQL instance, we need to run the command below

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Then we’ll exit the MySQL instance by running the command

mysql>   EXIT;

Step 2: Install additional PHP extensions

LAMP stack requires only a minimal set of extensions for PHP to communicate with MySQL database server. However, WordPress and many of its plugins require additional extensions to function without complications.

With that in mind, we’re now going to install additional PHP extensions for WordPress.

First, update the system:

# sudo apt update

Next, install the additional PHP extensions:

# sudo apt install php-curl php-gd php-mbstring php-xml php-xmlrpc php-  soap php-intl php-zip

To load these extensions, restart Apache web server by running the following command:

# sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 3: Download WordPress

With all the prerequisites in place, let’s go ahead and download WordPress.

For security reasons, I recommend always downloading WordPress from its official repository:

First Navigate to /var/www/ directory

# cd  /var/www/```

Then download the zipped folder using the command

# curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Extract the tarball file

# tar -xvf latest.tar.gz

The extraction of the tarball file yields a folder labeled wordpress.

This is the folder that contains all the WordPress configuration files. At this point, it’s safe to delete the tarball file you just downloaded from the WordPress repository.

# rm latest.tar.gz

Step 4: Configure the WordPress directory

Before we proceed to the next step, we need to adjust ownership and file permissions of the WordPress directory.

Let’s assign file ownership to all the files in the WordPress directory using the

# sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/wordpress

Next, we’ll set the correct permissions as shown:

# sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
# sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;

We also need to rename the sample configuration file in the WordPress directory to a filename it can read from:

# cd /var/www/wordpress
# mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Next, we will open the wp-config.php file using the default text editor Vim.

# vim  wp-config.php

Now scroll down and locate the database settings as shown below. Be sure to fill in the WordPress database name, database user, database password and hostname.

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpressdb');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'admin-user');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'StrongPassword');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Save and exit the configuration file.

You also need to generate security keys to provide additional security to your WordPress installation. WordPress provides an automatic generator for these keys to eliminate the need for generating them ourselves.

To generate these values from WordPress secret generator, simply run the command:

# curl -s https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/

Note: The command gave us the output below. DO NOT USE THESE VALUES, you need to copy the unique values that you generated.

define('AUTH_KEY',      'UV>...SAMPLE ONLY...COPY YOUR OWN VALUES...mL)');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  'bn(UV>...SAMPLE ONLY...COPY YOUR OWN VALUES...emL)zx');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',    '-naUV>...SAMPLE ONLY...COPY YOUR OWN VALUES...emL{fY');
define('NONCE_KEY',     '{xNwUV>...SAMPLE ONLY...COPY YOUR OWN VALUES...emL8Fq');
define('AUTH_SALT',        'j+;UV>...SAMPLE ONLY...COPY YOUR OWN VALUES...emLZpu');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', '0M=UV>...SAMPLE ONLY...COPY YOUR OWN VALUES...emL*xC');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT',   'G&2UV>...SAMPLE ONLY...COPY YOUR OWN VALUES...emLps+');
define('NONCE_SALT',    '2gZUV>...SAMPLE ONLY...COPY YOUR OWN VALUES...emLh/L');

Copy the unique output that you’ve generated.

Once again, open the WordPress configuration file wp-config.php

# vim  wp-config.php

Scroll and locate the section that contains the dummy values, which looks like this:

define('AUTH_KEY',         'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',    'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_KEY',        'put your unique phrase here');
define('AUTH_SALT',        'put your unique phrase here');
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT',   'put your unique phrase here');
define('NONCE_SALT',       'put your unique phrase here');

Delete those values and paste the security keys that WordPress generated for you.

Now save and exit the configuration file.

Step 5: Modify Apache configuration

In this step, we need to make a few adjustments to the default configuration file 000-default.conf in the path /etc/apache2/sites-available.

Start by opening the default configuration file

# vim  /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Next, locate the DocumentRoot attribute and change it from /var/www/html to /var/www/wordpress.

In the same file, copy and paste the following lines inside the Virtual Host block.

<Directory /var/www/wordpress/>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>

virtual_host_wordpress_ubuntu

Save and exit the configuration file.

Next, you need to enable the mod_rewrite so that you can use WordPress Permalink feature.

# sudo a2enmod rewrite

To verify that all went well, execute the command.

# sudo apache2ctl configtest

Output: Ok

To implement the changes, restart Apache web server.

# sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 6: Run WordPress installation using the web browser

At this point, you’ve finished all the server configurations for your WordPress installation.

The final step is to complete the installation via a web browser.

To do this, launch your web browser and browser your server’s IP address or domain name
http://server_IP_address or http://YOUR-DOMAIN

The first page will prompt you to select the language.

wordpress_ubuntu_language

Click on your preferred language and hit the ‘Continue’ button.

In the next step fill in the additional information required such as ‘Site Name’, ‘Username’ , ‘Password’, and ‘Email address’.

wordpress_ubuntu_welcomeOnce you’ve filled in all the required fields, click on ‘Install WordPress’

If all went well, you will be directed to the Login Page.

Hit the ‘Login’ button and you’ll head to the world-famous WordPress dashboard that you see below:

wordpress_ubuntu_dashboard

Guess what? You just installed WordPress on Ubuntu!

Congratulations! If you’ve followed along this far, you’ve installed WordPress with LAMP on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

So, now you’re ready to get to work building your new blog or website.

How to Install a LAMP Stack on Ubuntu 18.04

What is a LAMP Stack?

A LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack is a common, free, and open-source web stack used for hosting web content in a Linux environment. Many consider it the platform of choice on which to develop and deploy high-performance web apps.

This guide shows how to install and test a LAMP stack on Ubuntu 18.04 (LTS).

Install LAMP Ubuntu 18.04

Using the tasksel command the procedure of installing LAMP on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver is a rather trivial matter. First, make sure that you have the tasksel package installed:

$ sudo apt install tasksel

To install LAMP server using tasksel execute:

$ sudo tasksel install lamp-server

Test your LAMP Install

Create a simple PHP Info page to test your LAMP installation:

$ sudo bash -c "echo -e '<?php\nphpinfo();\n?>' > /var/www/html/phpinfo.php"

The above command will create a new /var/www/html/phpinfo.php file with the following content:

$ cat /var/www/html/phpinfo.php
<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Read More

How To Install the LAMP Stack on CentOS 7

Pre-flight Checks

To find out which Linux distribution you are running, use this command:
cat /etc/redhat-release
It’s now time to verify that our yum environment is clean and up to date, we’ll do this by cleaning all of the yum cache, and update yum using:
yum clean all
yum update

Installing LAMP

Now that we know what environment we’re working in let’s get started on installing the LAMP stack on CentOS 7:

L – Linux

The first part of the stack is Linux. This is your operating system and since it is already installed there no need to worry about installing it or make any modifications. Installing CentOS 7 is easy to download and install using the image files that are provided from centos.org. CentOS has a helpful installation guide if you need to reference it for additional installation instructions.

A – Apache

Apache is the next piece of the LAMP stack. Apache is the webserver software that is responsible for serving the content to your web browser from the server. It takes the requests that it receives and sends back the HTML code for your browser to interpret.
Install Apache using Yum:
yum -y install httpd

Open ports in the FW:
firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http -add-service=https
firewall-cmd --reload

Start and enable apache to run when the server starts:
systemctl start httpd
systemctl enable httpd

Default Apache installation locations:

Some important server locations to remember for Apache are listed below. These are out-of-the-box defaults and can be changed as you see fit:
httpd binary: /sbin/httpd
Apache configuration file: /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Website files: /var/www/html/
Apache logs: /var/log/httpd/

M – MySQL/MariaDB

MySQL and MariaDB are what handle your website’s database. In most of today’s websites, data is not stored in flat or static files. Instead, the base of the site is coded in PHP which can pull information from your website’s database to deliver more dynamic content. MySQL and MariaDB are popular database servers that help house that information. MariaDB is becoming more widely used, so we’ll use for installation. Both are very similar in setting up and configuring.

Install MariaDB:
yum -y install mariadb-server
systemctl start mariadb

Although securing mysql is optional, it is strongly recommended:
mysql_secure_installation
**Run through the steps on screen to secure your Mysql/MariaDB environment

Enable MariaDB to start when the server starts:
systemctl enable mariadb

Default installation locations:

Some important server locations to remember for MySQL/MariaDB are listed below. These are out-of-the-box defaults and can be changed as you see fit:
MariaDB binary: /bin/mysql
MariaDB Configuration file: /etc/my.cnf
Database location: /var/lib/mysql
MariaDB logs: /var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log

P – PHP

Most websites that exist today are built using PHP coding. PHP provides the programmer with more options for dynamic content compared to flat html code. Several PHP versions are available for use depending on what PHP version the website was built in. We’ll install the latest version of PHP.

In order to install the latest PHP version, we first need to install CentOS’s Software Collection repository (SCL):
yum -y install centos-release-scl.noarch

We’ll now have access to install PHP 7.2 :
yum -y install rh-php72

Now we’ll fix the symbolic link for the binary:
ln -s /opt/rh/rh-php72/root/usr/bin/php /usr/bin/php

Install the updated PHP Module for Mysql/MariaDB:
yum -y install rh-php72-php-mysqlnd

Restart apache to work with the newly installed PHP:
systemctl restart httpd