How to install WordPress (CMS) on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Welcome Aboard. In this blog post, I will be teaching you about WordPress, why do you need it, and how to install it in your Ubuntu 16.04 Server.
What is WordPress
It is a popular Content Management Systems (CMS), that is used by millions of people across the globe, such as writers, celebrities, and e-commerce sites.
Why do you Need it
WordPress makes it specially easy to get started with a Website, with an interface that is designed for content creation, yet it is powerful and configurable enough to build wide-scale applications with it.
Find a Server
The first thing you’re going to want to do is get a server running a fresh copy of Ubuntu. There are multiple ways you can achieve this.
For example:
- Set up a Virtual Machine (VM), using a tool such as Virtualbox
- Sign up for Web Hosting
I generally recommend Bluehost or Amazon Web Services, but there are other options.
Updating Ubuntu Server
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Installing LAMP server on Ubuntu
I wrote a blog post on How to install Linux, Apache 2, MySQL, and PHP 7.0 (LAMP) stack on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.
Make sure you check that out, for reference.
Logging into MySQL
mysql -u root --password=YOUR_DB_PASSWORD
Creating the WordPress Database
CREATE DATABASE wordpressdb;
CREATE USER [email protected] IDENTIFIED BY 'YOUR_PASSWORD'
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on wordpressdb.* TO [email protected];
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit
Installing WordPress
Navigate into the temporary files directory
cd /tmp
Download a fresh copy of WordPress
sudo apt-get install wget
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
Unzip the archive into the webserver root directory
sudo apt-get install unzip
unzip -q latest.zip -d /var/www/html/
Recursively assign (change the owner of) the WordPress installation directories to www-data user
This must be done as su (root)
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wordpress
Change directory permissions to 0755, this makes it readable, writable and executable for the User; readable and executable for the Group; readable and executable to the outside World:
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/wordpress
Create the uploads directory for your assets, and make sure to pass in the -p flag. This tells it to produce no error if is already existing, and make parent directories as needed
mkdir -p /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/uploads
Recursively assign the uploads directory to www-data user
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/uploads
Setting up .htaccess
.htaccess is a configuration file used on web servers running the Apache, used to enable/disable additional functionality and features in the web page.
If you followed along up to this point, you will probably notice that you have WordPress installed as a sub-directory of your web root. See for yourself, try to access the IP Address at the moment… what you will get is the default Apache page, which is not ideal.
No need to worry, though. I have a plan.
Navigate into the sub directory and copy the index.php and .htaccess files into the web root directory.
cd /var/www/html/wordpress
cp index.php ../index.php
cp .htaccess ../.htaccess
Go up to the web root
cd /var/www/html
Edit the .htaccess file to tell the web server where to find your installation directory when the user sends a request to your IP Address.
sudo vim .htaccess
Replace the existing content with the following:
# BEGIN WordPress
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress
Change the file permissions so that WordPress can write to it, if necessary (required for changing permalinks structure)
sudo chmod 666 .htacess
Enable the rewrite module
sudo a2enmod rewrite
Update apache2.conf to AllowOverride All
cd /etc/apache2
sudo vim apache2.conf
By default it’s set to AllowOverride None
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
Update index.php to use your new config
Change
require( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/wp-blog-header.php' );
to
require( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/wordpress/wp-blog-header.php' );
Restart the Apache service
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Test your setup
Refresh the webpage, and you should see the setup screen. Follow the steps to properly configure your preferences such as language, and database connection variables. If done correctly, you should be sent to your admin page.
And there you go, you have correctly installed and configured WordPress on your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS instance!
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Twitter: @giovanni0918
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Website: giovanni-orlando.com