How To Install WordPress On a VPS server
In the become a blogger article series, I told you the best way to start a blog is using WordPress. WordPress is an open-source and free script and, In my opinion, the best one to start a blog. In this article, I’m going to talk about how to install WordPress. The WordPress installation is a little different according to your server. In this article, I will tell you how to install WordPress on a VPS server.
You may be asking what I need to go with my server and my self-managed WordPress hosting, and so on. If you want to go now with managed WordPress hosting like in GoDaddy in Hostgator and Bluehost and other web hosting services, you will see the lowest price for one website if you go to GoDaddy as an example, about $10. And if you go to Hostgator, you will see almost about $6 for only one site, and for Bluehost, you can start with WordPress pro for about $19 per month and so on.
So in this article, I will tell you how to create your server very quickly, create your WordPress websites for ten dollars, and host as much as your server resources can handle. So what you need are two things a VPS server, a virtual private server, and a domain name to create your WordPress websites. I will be making a VPS server using DigitalOcean web services, so please go to DigitalOcean. after creating an account, click on create and go to droplets. Droplet is an alternative way for VPS in DigitalOcean. Select Ubuntu, and I think the 10 Dollar package is alright. And after that, click on create. An email will come to you with the VPS IP, your password, and other information.
How to Install WordPress on a VPS server
If you’re using a VPS that doesn’t include one-click setup options for apps such as WordPress, you can always opt for a manual install of WordPress on VPS. For this example, I will do the entire setup on a brand new VPS running CentOS 7.
1. Connect to Your VPS Via SSH
Once you have a VPS up and running, you’ll need two things to follow these instructions:
- Your server’s root password so you can run the necessary commands.
- A Secure Shell (SSH) client such as Putty.
To access your VPS, you’ll need to install Putty and open the application. Once you do that, you’ll see a section where you can specify the destination you want to connect to:
Now type your VPSs IP address within the Host Name (or IP Address) field, set the Port option to 22, choose SSH under Connection type, then click Open. A command window will pop up, asking what user you want to log in as. Type root, then enter your password when prompted:
If you typed your password correctly, your VPSs name should display, and we can get down to business!
2. Install the Software You Need to Run WordPress
To run WordPress, you need an HTTP server, a database, and PHP. For this tutorial, I will install Apache, MariaDB, and the latest version of PHP. Fortunately, you can do so in one fell swoop with a single command:
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sudo yum install httpd mariadb mariadb-server php php-common php-mysql php-gd php-xml php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-xmlrpc unzip wget -y
This tells your server to download all of the necessary files and set them up. The process might take a few minutes depending on how fast your server is, and when everything’s ready, you’ll be able to type in more commands.
Once the underlying software is ready, you need to initialize it and tell your server to boot it up every time. Here are the commands you’ll need to use:
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sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable httpd
sudo systemctl enable mariadb
At this stage, there’s only one step left to go before you can install WordPress on a VPS server and start using it, and that’s to configure your database.
3. Configure MariaDB and Create a WordPress Database
Before you can create a database for your website, you need to ‘secure’ your MariaDB installation so people can’t access it remotely. To get started, enter the following command:
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sudo mysql_secure_installation
Afterward, MariaDB will ask you for its root user password, which should be blank, so just hit the enter key. Then, you’ll be able to set a new root password. For the rest of the settings, hit Y for all of the remaining four options, particularly number three, which disallows remote logins.
Now, login into your MariaDB account using the following command, and keep in mind you’ll need to enter the password you set a moment ago:
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mysql -u root -p
Once you’re in, there are four commands you need to run in turn. Each line below is an individual command, so keep that in mind. Also, remember to replace the user and password placeholders with a more secure pair for use with your database:
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CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on wordpress.* to 'user'@'localhost' identified by 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit
There you go! Your new database is ready for use, so let’s not keep it waiting.
4. Install and Run WordPress
We have set up our infrastructure, and the final step is to download the software and install and configure it. Let’s kick things off with a quick series of commands to download the latest version of the platform, extract its files, and move them to your root directory. Keep in mind each of the lines below is an individual command you need to run separately:
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wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz
sudo cp -avr wordpress/* /var/www/html/
So far, so good. Now let’s create an Uploads folder for your installation and assign the correct permissions to your files and folders using the following two commands:
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sudo mkdir /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads
sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/
Finally, let’s rename your WordPress wp-config-sample.php file…
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cd /var/www/html/
sudo mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php
sudo nano wp-config.php
…and configure it so it can connect to your database. The last command you ran will open the file using the nano editor within the command line. It’s a bit tricky to use, but navigate the file using your keyboard arrows and replace the following fields with the same data you entered during step number three:
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define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
define('DB_USER', 'user');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
After updating those fields, type CTRL+O and CTRL+X on your keyboard. The former will save the changes you made to the file, while the latter will close the nano editor. All that is left to do now; is to configure your VPS to allow HTTP and HTTPS connections with these commands:
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sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Once you run them, you’ll be able to access the WordPress installer by visiting your VPSs at http://yourvpsipgoeshere, replacing the placeholder accordingly.
That’s it! We went through many commands, but the process itself is pretty simple when you realize it’s mostly copying, pasting, and following instructions. With this guide, you’ll be able to install WordPress on a VPS server.
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