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See Instead:
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Wordpress is a free and open source website and blogging tool that uses php and MySQL. It was created in 2003 and has since then expanded to manage 22% of all the new websites created and has over 20,000 plugins to customize its functionality.
This tutorial covers installing Wordpress. Before you go through it, make sure your server is ready for Wordpress. You need root privileges (check out steps 3 and 4 for details): Initial Server Setup
You need to have nginx, MySQL, and PHP-FPM installed on your server: LEMP tutorial
Only once you have the user and required software should you proceed to install wordpress!
We can download Wordpress straight from their website:
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
This command will download the zipped wordpress package straight to your user's home directory. You can unzip it the the next line:
tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz
After we unzip the wordpress files, they will be in a directory called wordpress in the home directory on the virtual private server.
Now we need to switch gears for a moment and create a new MySQL directory for wordpress.
Go ahead and log into the MySQL Shell:
mysql -u root -p
Login using your MySQL root password, and then we need to create a wordpress database, a user in that database, and give that user a new password. Keep in mind that all MySQL commands must end with semi-colon.
First, let's make the database (I'm calling mine wordpress for simplicity's sake; feel free to give it whatever name you choose):
CREATE DATABASE wordpress; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
Then we need to create the new user. You can replace the database, name, and password, with whatever you prefer:
CREATE USER wordpressuser@localhost; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Set the password for your new user:
SET PASSWORD FOR wordpressuser@localhost= PASSWORD("password"); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Finish up by granting all privileges to the new user. Without this command, the wordpress installer will not be able to start up:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO wordpressuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Then refresh MySQL:
FLUSH PRIVILEGES; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Exit out of the MySQL shell:
exit
The first step to is to copy the sample WordPress configuration file, located in the WordPress directory, into a new file which we will edit, creating a new usable WordPress config:
cp ~/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php ~/wordpress/wp-config.php
Then open the wordpress config:
sudo nano ~/wordpress/wp-config.php
Find the section that contains the field below and substitute in the correct name for your database, username, and password:
// ** 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', 'wordpressuser'); /** MySQL database password */ define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
Save and Exit.
We are almost done uploading Wordpress to the server. We need to create the directory where we will keep the wordpress files:
sudo mkdir -p /var/www
Transfer the unzipped WordPress files to the website's root directory.
sudo cp -r ~/wordpress/* /var/www
We can modify the permissions of /var/www to allow future automatic updating of Wordpress plugins and file editing with SFTP. If these steps aren't taken, you may get a "To perform the requested action, connection information is required" error message when attempting either task.
First, switch in to the web directory:
cd /var/www/
Give ownership of the directory to the nginx user, replacing the "username" with the name of your server user.
sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R sudo usermod -a -G www-data username
Now we need to set up the WordPress virtual host.
Create a new file for the for WordPress host, copying the format from the default configuration:
sudo cp /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-available/wordpress
Open the WordPress virtual host:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/wordpress
The configuration should include the changes below (the details of the changes are under the config information):
server { listen 80; root /var/www; index index.php index.html index.htm; server_name 192.34.59.214; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args; } error_page 404 /404.html; error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html; location = /50x.html { root /usr/share/nginx/www; } # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 location ~ \.php$ { try_files $uri =404; #fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; # With php5-fpm: fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock; fastcgi_index index.php; include fastcgi_params; } }
Here are the details of the changes:
Save and Exit that file.
Although all the configuration for worpress has been completed, we still need to activate the server block by creating a symbolic link:
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/wordpress /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/wordpress
Additionally, delete the default nginx server block.
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
Install php5-mysql:
sudo apt-get install php5-mysql
Then, as always, restart nginx and php-fpm:
sudo service nginx restart
sudo service php5-fpm restart
Once that is all done, the wordpress online installation page is up and waiting for you:
Access the page by visiting your site's domain or IP address (eg. example.com/wp-admin/install.php) and fill out the short online form (it should look like this).
Once Wordpress is installed, you have a strong base for building your site.
If you want to encrypt the information on your site, you can Install an SSL Certificate
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I am getting this error while making databse user ERROR 1819 (HY000): Your password does not satisfy the current policy requirements I am logged in using the password i set earlier.
I followed all steps but my css and javascript aren’t loading here is the console log
Thanks for the guide - works nicely. I ave a problem similar to one mentioned before with permalinks - for some reason Nginx is only showing the root and the admin panel - anything else gets the 404… Instaling nginx helper plugin did not resolve this
Thanks, Shai
I have followed Step 5 “to allow future automatic updating of Wordpress plugins” with
cd /var/www sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R sudo usermod -a -G www-data myusername
but I still get the “To perform the requested action, connection information is required” error message when I click the Update button from within Wordpress. I then tried
sudo chmod -R g+w *
to attempt to give myusername group write permission. But that failed. I temporarily had to
sudo chmod -R go+w
which finally allowed the automatic update to occur without error.
But I don’t want to expose the Wordpress files to be world writable just to permit automatic updating. What am I missing?
You failed to mention to install php5-gd. WordPress depends on either the GD library or imagemagick to do photo editing and manipulation. You should include this in the tutorial.
We can modify the permissions of /var/www to allow future automatic updating of Wordpress plugins and file editing with SFTP
This is exactly what I want. But does it have to be in /var/www/? My understanding is that for multi-site hosting on Debian, so presumably Ubuntu too, the default directory for web site files and directories is /srv/.
I would like to retain the ability to host non-WP sites on the same droplet, besides which any WP sites I host are likely to be so different as to make a multi-site WP installation impractical. Is this tutorial for single site droplets or do we simply treat WP sites differently?
So can I set a WP site up in the standard way, e.g. /srv/mydomain.tld/public/ where htdocs is the name of the WP installation and the permissions there will affect whether or not updates will be automatic?
Alternatively, can simlinks be used to create the same effect? i.e. put the site in /srv and simlink to it from /var/www
Thank you for sharing this information. I have a question. i purchased a theme but there is no style sheet. Now, there is a any way to fix this problem.
Hi,
I was trying to set-up 3 separate WordPress instances on a Single VPS (Not to get confused with MultiSite)
Each Instance will have their own domain name.
After following all the steps in this tutorial (I didn’t receive any error message) and successfully completed them, now when I try to navigate to my server i.e. http://128.199.143.37/
I see "Welcome to nginx ! " page, instead of WordPress Install Page.
Below are the steps which I have performed. Please do let me know what I have done wrong or is anything missing.
Appreciate all your help !
Thanks in Advance !
==================================================================================
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz tar xzvf latest.tar.gz
==================================================================================
mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE FirstSite; CREATE DATABASE SecondSite; CREATE DATABASE ThirdSite;
CREATE USER firstadmin@localhost; CREATE USER secondadmin@localhost; CREATE USER thirdadmin@localhost;
SET PASSWORD FOR firstadmin@localhost= PASSWORD(“password”); SET PASSWORD FOR secondadmin@localhost= PASSWORD(“password”); SET PASSWORD FOR thirdadmin@localhost= PASSWORD(“password”);
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON FirstSite.* TO firstadmin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON SecondSite.* TO secondadmin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ThirdSite.* TO thirdadmin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit
==================================================================================
sudo mkdir -p /var/www cd /var/www
sudo mkdir FirstSite sudo mkdir SecondSite sudo mkdir ThirdSite
cp ~/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php ~/wordpress/wp-config.php
sudo rsync -avP ~/wordpress/ /var/www/FirstSite/ sudo rsync -avP ~/wordpress/ /var/www/SecondSite/ sudo rsync -avP ~/wordpress/ /var/www/ThirdSite/
sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R sudo usermod -a -G www-data admin
==================================================================================
cd /var/www/FirstSite
sudo nano wp-config.php
// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** // /** The name of the database for WordPress */ define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘FirstSite’);
/** MySQL database username */ define(‘DB_USER’, ‘firstadmin’);
/** MySQL database password */ define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’);
==================================================================================
cd /var/www/SecondSite
sudo nano wp-config.php
// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** // /** The name of the database for WordPress */ define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘SecondSite’);
/** MySQL database username */ define(‘DB_USER’, ‘secondadmin’);
/** MySQL database password */ define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’);
==================================================================================
cd /var/www/ThirdSite
sudo nano wp-config.php
// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** // /** The name of the database for WordPress */ define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘ThirdSite’);
/** MySQL database username */ define(‘DB_USER’, ‘thirdadmin’);
/** MySQL database password */ define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password’);
==================================================================================
sudo cd /etc/nginx/sites-available
sudo cp default FirstSite sudo cp default SecondSite sudo cp default ThirdSite
edit each of the above file and change the following information as listed below
Change the root to /var/www/ Add index.php to the index line. Change the server_name from local host to your domain name or IP address. Change the “try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;” line to “try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;” to enable Wordpress Permalinks with nginx. Uncomment the correct lines in “location ~ .php$ {“ section.
Save and Exit that file.
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/FirstSite
server { listen 80;
}
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/SecondSite
server { listen 80;
}
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/ThirdSite
server { listen 80;
}
==================================================================================
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/FirstSite /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/FirstSite sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/SecondSite /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/SecondSite sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/ThirdSite /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ThirdSite
sudo mv /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default.bak
sudo apt-get install php5-mysql
sudo service nginx restart
sudo service php5-fpm restart
==================================================================================
http://128.199.143.37
BACKGROUND So I’ve spent the better part of the past few weeks creating and destroying and creating and destroying droplets trying to follow DO’s LEMP tutorials in hopes that changing servers from a managed wordpress one to this one would get rid of a Bad Request error my client’s website has been getting.
THE PROBLEM I’ve gotten Wordpress installed on the new LEMP droplet according to the files list (ls) but trying to go to any wordpress pages give a 404. I went back and installed PHPMyAdmin and it shows that there’s a database called ‘wordpress’ and it says “No tables found in database”. Help?
I’ve tried restarting php5-fpm and nginx. Going to the IP address (which is what I’ve put instead of www.example.com in the config files) alone gives me the “Welcome to nginx” page. phpinfo finally works and gives me a bunch of info but I’m not sure how helpful that is.
Any help would be greatly appreciated! I really need to get this working… Thanks!
@mattlucas: You need to run it as root: