How to Install WordPress on the Linux Apache MySQL and PHP stack ?

Last Updated : 06 Jul, 2021

WordPress is one of the commonly used Content Management systems on the web. It is written in PHP web servers like Apache are enough to run it. WordPress supports MySQL and MariaDB, but MySQL is widely used. This tutorial will help you to run WordPress using the LAMP(Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack on your Linux machine (probably VPS).

Prerequisites:

A Linux machine (Here using Ubuntu)
A sudo user account
Some basic command line experience
Little MySQL experience

This article assumes that you are familiar with PHP, MySQL, and WordPress.

Installing PHP: PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a language used to write WordPress. You can install PHP using below command. libapache2-mod-php and php-mysql are libraries that help PHP, Apache and MySQL smoothly.

sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql

To verify that you have successfully installed PHP, type the below command:

php -v

// output should look like below content
PHP 7.4.3 (cli) (built: Oct  6 2020 15:47:56) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.4.3, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

Install additional PHP modules like Curl, XML, XMLRPC to help ease the run of WordPress

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

Installing and Configuring Apache: Apache is one of the most widely used web servers. Apache2 is the latest version of the webserver. You can install Apache using the below command:

sudo apt install apache2

To verify that you have successfully installed Apache, type the below command

apache2 -v

// output
Server version: Apache/2.4.41 (Ubuntu)

We will configure Apache virtual hosts for WordPress, we will create a new conf file wordpress.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/wordpress.conf

Use the below template to configure to .htaccess file, we will be installing WordPress in /var/www/wordpress, so we will use it as a directory.

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName yourdomain.name
    <Directory /var/www/wordpress>
        AllowOverride All
        DirectoryIndex index.php
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Now enable the Apache rewrite module and check the Apache config syntax. If you have used syntax correctly, you will get syntax as correct.

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo apache2ctl configtest
.
// output
Syntax OK

If you get an error like the below one before Syntax OK, it’s perfectly alright because we are using localhost.

AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1. Set the ‘ServerName’ directive globally to suppress this message

Installing and Configure MySQL: MySQL is a popular open-source relational database management system. To install MySQL you can run the below commands, you can also verify whether MySQL is installed successfully or not.

sudo apt install mysql-server
mysql -V

// output
mysql  Ver 8.0.25-0ubuntu0.20.04.1 for Linux on x86_64 ((Ubuntu))

Now login into MySQL and change the mysql-native-password

sudo mysql -u root
ALTER USER ‘root’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY ‘secure password’;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Now login into MySQL using the root user with the new password and create a new database for wordpress

CREATE DATABASE wordpress DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

Now we will create a new MySQL user and Grant all access to WordPress database to the new wordpress user

mysql> CREATE DATABASE wordpress DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

mysql> CREATE USER ‘wordpressuser’@’%’ IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY ‘secure password’;

mysql> GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO ‘wordpressuser’@’%’;

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

mysql> EXIT;

Downloading WordPress: If you are on Ubuntu, you can directly install using APT and you can skip this step

sudo apt install wordpress

But we will directly install WordPress from the WordPress repository

First, we will download the WordPress latest version from its repository (we are downloading it into a temporary folder so that the downloaded package and another file that helps in building WordPress but not helpful while it’s running will be deleted automatically on a reboot).
Now we will unzip the WordPress package

cd /tmp
curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar xzvf latest.tar.gz

Now we will create the Apache .htaccess file and WordPress config file from the sample config. We will also create a directory named “upgrade”, which makes sure that WordPress won’t run into permissions issues when trying to do an update to its software.

touch /tmp/wordpress/.htaccess
cp /tmp/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php /tmp/wordpress/wp-config.php
mkdir /tmp/wordpress/wp-content/upgrade

Now we will copy the unpacked wordpress directory to /var/www for apache to run

sudo cp -a /tmp/wordpress/. /var/www/wordpress

Configuring WordPress: Now we will adjust the wordpress files and directory permission. “www-data” user and group is the user that the Apache webserver runs as, and Apache will need to be able to read and write WordPress files in order to serve the website and perform automatic updates.

We need to give wordpress directories 750 permission which means the current user(www-data) can read, write, and execute, the group cannot write, and others cannot read, write, or execute.
We need to give wordpress files 640 permission which means the current user(www-data) can read, write, and the group can only read and others cannot read, write, or execute.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/wordpress
sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;

Now we will create some secure keys for our installation, you can make a request to WordPress API, and it will provide you with the keys, Don’t copy these keys make sure you have your own keys

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

// the output will be similar to the one belowdefine(‘AUTH_KEY’, ‘:BiuKIi%W7<p?4Jm}`1XTJOw!cQBKxcOt]DylUDyO$BB<>t)*FN.qf*q|+-W7}8f’);
define(‘SECURE_AUTH_KEY’, ‘7[Kh-{P#A~<PGMkIOHC#9Fta$XGemco5F8k}G66I[lXqD|`IZ8cyM2O>!NjtvW(o’);
define(‘LOGGED_IN_KEY’, ‘La{SEJ{$uI<6Txgv QqY4cxG]3+-r[Iqcx.IFxlfN.f/Yd?317zR*+Yt=*PMWM$(‘);
define(‘NONCE_KEY’, ‘U5pGQf.`J{.Hd~P/9Snw`V2+#<t+;>OTY!VOW[-aoruh;dhSUX]09xj*O<KXdZ6+’);
define(‘AUTH_SALT’, ‘fmByAIfcEq&V}Xf,mF)!a09:-Q$R^/:79!k|<pEL@>VU)|C7|(>;`{N(4ZHg O)n’);
define(‘SECURE_AUTH_SALT’, ‘s5N%EIR(eM@tlg;M%L-+F#:<|r_x5-]Ix.&eYN)ya5ktoWLE+H~zUGkX#HceO/;H’);
define(‘LOGGED_IN_SALT’, ‘EGcaE`=DAh7lv*klFyV0VLy5<@af_*–3otD$3:^;z~C(f^JB[C0T;`yqE)2@y${‘);
define(‘NONCE_SALT’, ‘rP1%&ojrP0XLRuQ1AS#@u}#2-Q+)5ftKeJpWC$oxD]?&3}|+n2Gt{1$`kZbSW`-q’);

Now open the WordPress config file and add these keys along with details of the database, we have setup for wordpress. Below is a sample config file-

sudo nano /var/www/wordpress/wp-config.php

PHP

<?php 
  
/* MySQL settings - You can get this  
   info from your web host */
/** The name of database for WordPress */
define( 'DB_NAME', 'wordpress' ); 
  
/** MySQL database username */
define( 'DB_USER', 'wordpressuser' ); 
  
/** MySQL database password */
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'wordpress' ); 
  
/** 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', '' ); 
  
/**#@+ 
 * Authentication Unique Keys and Salts. 
 * 
 * Change these to different unique phrases! 
 * You can generate these using the { 
 * @link https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/  
 * WordPress.org secret-key service} 
 * You can change these at any point in time to  
 * invalidate all existing cookies. This will force  
 * all users to have to log in again. 
 * 
 * @since 2.6.0 
 */
define('AUTH_KEY',         ':BiuKIi%W7<p?4Jm}`1XTJOw!cQBKxcOt]DylUDyO$BB<>t)*FN.qf*q|+-W7}8f'); 
define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  '7[Kh-{P#A~<PGMkIOHC#9Fta$XGemco5F8k}G66I[lXqD|`IZ8cyM2O>!NjtvW(o'); 
define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',    'La{SEJ{$uI<6Txgv QqY4cxG]3+-r[Iqcx.IFxlfN.f/Yd?317zR*+Yt=*PMWM$('); 
define('NONCE_KEY',        'U5pGQf.`J{.Hd~P/9Snw`V2+#<t+;>OTY!VOW[-aoruh;dhSUX]09xj*O<KXdZ6+'); 
define('AUTH_SALT',        'fmByAIfcEq&V}Xf,mF)!a09:-Q$R^/:79!k|<pEL@>VU)|C7|(>;`{N(4ZHg O)n'); 
define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 's5N%EIR(eM@tlg;M%L-+F#:<|r_x5-]Ix.&eYN)ya5ktoWLE+H~zUGkX#HceO/;H'); 
define('LOGGED_IN_SALT',   'EGcaE`=DAh7lv*klFyV0VLy5<@af_*--3otD$3:^;z~C(f^JB[C0T;`yqE)2@y${'); 
define('NONCE_SALT',       'rP1%&ojrP0XLRuQ1AS#@u}#2-Q+)5ftKeJpWC$oxD]?&3}|+n2Gt{1$`kZbSW`-q'); 
  
/**#@-*/
  
/** 
 * WordPress Database Table prefix. 
 * 
 * You can have multiple installations in  
 * one database if you give each 
 * a unique prefix. Only numbers, letters,  
 * and underscores please! 
 */
$table_prefix = 'blog_'; 
  
/** 
 * For developers: WordPress debugging mode. 
 * 
 * Change this to true to enable the display  
 * of notices during development. 
 * It is strongly recommended that plugin  
 * and theme developers use WP_DEBUG 
 * in their development environments. 
 * 
 * For information on other constants that  
 * can be used for debugging, 
 * visit the documentation. 
 * 
 * @link https://wordpress.org/support/article/debugging-in-wordpress/ 
 */
define( 'WP_DEBUG', false ); 
  
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */
  
/** Absolute path to the WordPress directory. */
if ( ! defined( 'ABSPATH' ) ) { 
    define( 'ABSPATH', __DIR__ . '/' ); 
} 
  
/** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */
require_once ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php'; 
?>

Change database name, database user, and password to the values that we have created while configuring MySQL.
Change the salt keys from the keys that you have received when requested wordpress
Changing table prefix from “wp_” to “blog_” which is optional

Setting up WordPress: Now start the apache2 server and visit the WordPress installation

sudo service apache2 start

// visit 127.0.0.1/wordpress

Now select the user language

Select language

Now configure WordPress user details(This will be the default admin user)

User and site details

Give your WordPress a Site Name
Now choose a username for the user
Now give a password
Give a valid email (The email in the image) should not be used in Production).
Search engine visibility means gives site admin to allow search engines to index the site.

After you click “Install WordPress”, WordPress will be installed, and you will get a success screen.