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 WordPress On CentOS 7

Step 1) Preflight Check:

This article assumes you have CentOS 7 installed and are logged into your server as the root user. We are also using the most recent version of WordPress for this install. This article also assumes you have already installed LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) on your server and your PHP is updated to the latest version. You will also need to know your root mysql password so you can log into mysql as root.

Need help to install LAMP? Click this link!

mysql

 

If the above command isn’t working for you, then you may not be logged in as root user. In that case, you can run the following instead.

mysql -u root -p

 

Keep in mind that you will be prompted for the password you set earlier as root when you installed MySQL so you will need to have that handy. If you do not have your root password, you will have to reset it. If you need help with that, check out this article here and scroll down to the method via “Reset using command line“. Once you do gain access, you can safely move to step 2!

 

A successful login should look something like this:

login

 

 

 

 

 

Note:
To exit mysql at any time simply type: exit

exit

 

Step 2) Create a database

Hooray! We successfully logged in. Now we can create a database with the following command. You can call it whatever you would like, but for this article, we are calling it WordPress.

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

Note:
While it’s easier to copy and paste directly in the command line. You should know that every mysql command will require a ;  (colon) at the end of every statement in case you are getting an error.

Once our database is created, you need to create a user for that database. Once again I am using a very simple username, and password so feel free to make yours more secure. Do remember your username and password as we will need it later in this article. Type the following command.

CREATE USER adminuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

At this point, we have created a database user however, we still need to give that user permissions to access the database. We can add those permissions with the following command:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO adminuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
Replace anything in red with your database name, user, and password. Also, note that the password is contained in single quotes followed by a colon;

Note:
Remember your username and password you use in this step as will be needed later.

Now we want to flush MySQL so that it is made aware of those changes.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

 

and finally, exit MySQL

exit

 

Step 3) Install WordPress

 

cd ~
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

 

Note:
if you do not have wget yet you can download it with yum using the following:

 

yum install wget

 

Now, let’s  unzip that tar file

tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz

 

That should create a file named WordPress in our home directory. Next, we want to move that file and its contents to our public_html folder, so it can serve up the content for our website. We want to keep the same file permission, so we use the following rsync command.

sudo rsync -avP ~/wordpress/ /var/www/html/

For WordPress to be able to upload files, we need to create an uploads directory. Go ahead and use the following:

mkdir /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads

 

Lastly, update the Apache permissions for new WordPress files

sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/*

Step 4) Configuring WordPress

Next, we have to update the wp-config.php file in WordPress for it to connect to the database successfully. So let’s go to the html folder where your WordPress install is located.

cd /var/www/html

Create a wp-config.php file by copying the sample file WordPress has provided.

cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Now, we need to edit the new wp-config.php file with the correct database information we created in Step 1.

I used vim to make that change, but you can use any editor you are comfortable with.

vim  wp-config.php

Next, we need to add info into the following fields of the database, user, and password we created in Step 1.

Old Settings:

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define( 'DB_NAME', 'database_name_here' );
/** MySQL database username */
define( 'DB_USER', 'username_here' );
/** MySQL database password */
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here' );


New Settings:

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

Once you have made those changes, go ahead and save the file using the :wq command in Vim.

 

Step 5) Setup through wp-admin and verification

Now, let’s verify that your WordPress install is working. You should see something like the following on your server page. Replace server_domain_name_or_IP with your server name or IP.

http://server_domain_name_or_IP/wp-admin

install

 

If this is what you see then congrats!!! You have successfully installed WordPress on your Centos server, and you can close this article!

 

I have also listed a couple of common issues you might encounter in the sections below. Keep in mind that we cannot list every possible issue but, we have listed what we believe are the most common problems you may run into.

 

 

Database Error Establishing a Connection

If you are getting an Error about establishing a Database connection, verify that your wp-config.php file has the correct user, password and database name. There should be no spaces between the single quotes! This error usually means you have something going on in the wp-config.php file so be sure to check your syntax.

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define( 'DB_NAME', 'database_name_here' );
/** MySQL database username */
define( 'DB_USER', 'username_here' );
/** MySQL database password */
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here' );


Troubleshooting and Verifying php

The most common issue with php is, that it may not be fully up to date in order for it to work with the newer versions of WordPress. Usually, you will get the error “WordPress requires at least php version…“

In this next step, we will verify the php version is at least PHP 7.1, by creating a phpinfo.php page. However, it is always preferable to have the most up to date version of PHP, which at the time of this article is PHP 7.2, especially for security reasons.

To create a phpinfo page go to your /var/www/html and create a file called phpinfo.php.

touch phpinfo.php
chmod 644 phpinfo.php

 

and then, let’s add the following code:

<?php
// Show all information, defaults to INFO_ALL
phpinfo();
?>

Then, go to http://server_domain-name_or_IP/phpinfo.php

phpinfo page

And you should see something like this if your php is set up successfully.

 

If for some reason your php is out of date, you may have to update yum’s config file to do so.

 

First, double-check you have to correct yum packages with the following command

 

yum install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm

To enable php 7.2, we need to enable the php 7.2 remi repo. At the time of the release of this article, we are using php 7.2. So, in going forward, when they release php 7.4 or php 7.5, you would edit the corresponding file.

 

These should be located in your /etc/yum.repos.d folder. Open the file with vim, and change the enabled field to a 1, and then save the file using vim’s :wq command

[remi-php72]
name=Remi's PHP 7.2 RPM repository for Enterprise Linux 7 - $basearch
#baseurl=http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/php72/$basearch/
#mirrorlist=https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/php72/httpsmirror
mirrorlist=http://cdn.remirepo.net/enterprise/7/php72/mirror
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-remi

Update yum

yum update

Now, check for the php version of the php-fpm packages that should be on the server, under the field Version:

 

The output should look similar to this

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* base: centos.myfahim.com
* epel: mirror.ehost.vn
* extras: centos.myfahim.com
* remi-php72: mirrors.thzhost.com
* remi-safe: mirrors.thzhost.com
* updates: centos.myfahim.com
remi-php72 | 2.9 kB 00:00:00
remi-php72/primary_db | 195 kB 00:00:08
Available Packages
Name : php
Arch : x86_64
Version : 7.2.8
Release : 1.el7.remi
Size : 3.2 M
Repo : remi-php72
Summary : ........

Next, install, enable and then start php fpm with the following commands:

yum install php-fpm php-gd php-pdo php-mbstring php-pear -y
systemctl enable php-fpm
systemctl start php-fpm

Don’t forget to restart apache, and/or php, if changes where made.

 

If using Apache:

service httpd restart

If using Nginx:

service nginx restart

 

Once completed, your phpinfo.php page should show you using php 7.2 or later. If you are using Nginx, you may have to verify that it knows to how to send php requests to php-fpm. If you have an issue, double-check your nginx.conf for errors or misconfiguration problems.

If your php is working and up to date, check your web server settings.

 

Troubleshooting and verifying your web server

You should also check that your Apache or Nginx and ports configured correctly. You should be able to go here

http://server_domain_name_or_IP

and see something similar to this if apache is set up successfully.

testing123

Alternatively, if your using Nginx, something similar to this will appear

 

Lastly, don’t forget to restart your webserver any time you make changes.

 

If you are not getting one of these success pages, double check your configuration files in your Apache or Nginx settings. Also, you can check to see if you are listening to the proper ports.