Hosting WordPress on Ubuntu: A Step-by-Step Guide

Let's say you are a blogger or even a small business owner looking for a way to share your insights or products with the world at large. For this, you would need a perfect platform for your website that is also flexible with a vast array of plugins.
Well, here comes WordPress to the rescue. 

You now have a great platform, but you may want the freedom to customize your server environment and ensure that every aspect of your website runs exactly as you want, without relying on managed hosting services.
Okay. Ubuntu comes into play and combined with the power of the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) gives you complete control over your website.

All these may seem daunting at first but in this guide, I will walk you through the process of hosting WordPress on Ubuntu using the LAMP stack.

Overview of Key Components

Before we delve into the step-by-step process, let's take a brief look at what WordPress, Ubuntu, and the LAMP stack are, and their roles in this project:

• WordPress - WordPress is a widely used content management system (CMS) for creating and managing websites. It is well-known for its user-friendly interface and extensive library of plugins and themes. With WordPress, you can build anything from basic blogs to advanced e-commerce sites without requiring advanced technical skills. In this guide, WordPress will serve as the platform for creating and managing your website's content.

• Ubuntu - Ubuntu is a popular, open-source Linux operating system known for its stability, security, and ease of use. In this project, Ubuntu serves as the foundation, hosting the web server and other essential software components.

• LAMP Stack - LAMP is a set of open-source software for creating web servers, comprising Linux (Ubuntu as the operating system), Apache (webserver), MySQL (database), and PHP (scripting language). Each component is important and here is what they will do in this project:

  • Linux: Provides the Operating System foundation.
  • Apache: Handles browser requests and serves web pages.
  • MySQL: Manages the WordPress database.
  • PHP: Processes dynamic content and interacts with the database.

Prerequisites

1. An Ubuntu Server: You can use either a local machine(Vagrant virtual box)or a cloud-based virtual private server from AWS, Digital Ocean or Google Cloud.
2. A basic understanding of Linux commands

Steps

Update your package index

• This command sudo apt update updates the package lists for upgrades and new package installations from the repositories defined in your system.

Install Dependencies

• To install Apache2 and PHP, run the following command

sudo apt install apache2 \
                 ghostscript \
                 libapache2-mod-php \
                 mysql-server \
                 php \
                 php-bcmath \
                 php-curl \
                 php-imagick \
                 php-intl \
                 php-json \
                 php-mbstring \
                 php-mysql \
                 php-xml \
                 php-zip

Copy and paste this command into a text file before pasting it into your virtual environment to avoid errors.

Install WordPress

• Let's create a new directory first and change the ownership of this directory to the user www-data to ensure that the webserver has the appropriate access to these files.

sudo mkdir -p /srv/www
sudo chown www-data: /srv/www

• Next, let's download the latest version of WordPress and extract it into the /srv/www directory.

curl https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz | sudo -u www-data tar zx -C /srv/www

Here is what the code does:

This curl https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz command uses curl to download the file at the given URL, which is the latest version of WordPress in a gzipped tarball format. 
The pipe | command takes the output of the command on its left and uses it as the input to the command on its right.
sudo -u www-data: This runs the following command as the www-data user. This is done because the /srv/www directory is owned by www-data, which we set earlier if you can remember 
This command tar zx -C /srv/www extracts the gzipped tarball. The z option tells tar to uncompress the file (as it is gzipped), the x option tells it to extract the files from the tarball, and the -C /srv/www option tells it to change to the /srv/www directory before doing so.

To confirm you followed the above step correctly, run this command

ls -l /srv/www/wordpress

If you see an image like the one below, then you are on track.

Configure Apache for WordPress

• To configure Apache for WordPress, run this command to create and edit WordPress configuration file

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

The command above opens up an empty configuration file. Copy the codes below and paste them into the configuration file. Then, save it

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /srv/www/wordpress
    <Directory /srv/www/wordpress>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride Limit Options FileInfo
        DirectoryIndex index.php
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
    <Directory /srv/www/wordpress/wp-content>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

• When this is done, enable the site using this command - sudo a2ensite wordpress and then enable URL rewriting using this command sudo a2enmod rewrite lastly, disable the default site using sudo a2dissite 000-default

• To finish up with this step, reload apache2 to apply all these changes sudo service apache2 reload

Configure MySQL Database

• Before we proceed, it is important to note that MySQL commands end with ; or /g

• Let's begin with opening up the MySQL CLI using this command
  sudo mysql -u root

This command opens the MySQL command-line client as the root user

• Now, we create a database called wordpress, create a user for this database and give it a unique password. Next, we grant privileges to this user and with the flush privileges command, we reload the user privileges from the grant tables in the MySQL database. Here is the code at play:

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
CREATE USER wordpress@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '<your-password>';
GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP,ALTER ON wordpress.* TO wordpress@localhost;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit

• Please note that these commands should be copied one after the * other into the CLI to avoid errors.

• To apply these changes we made, let's enable the MySQL service with this command here - sudo service mysql start 

Configure WordPress to connect to the database

• First, let's create a new configuration file for WordPress by copying the sample configuration file to wp-config.php

sudo -u www-data cp /srv/www/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php /srv/www/wordpress/wp-config.php

• Next, we configure the credentials in the configuration file. Please note that the only thing you are expected to change in the commands below is your password.  Remember the unique password you created when you were creating the MySQL database? Yeah, that's the one.

sudo -u www-data sed -i 's/database_name_here/wordpress/' /srv/www/wordpress/wp-config.php
sudo -u www-data sed -i 's/username_here/wordpress/' /srv/www/wordpress/wp-config.php
sudo -u www-data sed -i 's/password_here/<your-password>/' /srv/www/wordpress/wp-config.php

• Now we need to edit the WordPress config file. Use this command to open and edit the config file sudo -u www-data /srv/www/wordpress/wp-config.php
• In your config file, scroll down to where you will find the commands below:

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' );

• Now delete these commands above and replace them with the content you will find here. (This address is a randomiser that returns completely random keys each time it is opened.)  See mine below:

This step is important to ensure that your site is not vulnerable to attacks.

Save the changes.

Customize WordPress to serve your web pages

• On your terminal, run this command ip a to copy the IP address of your local machine. Copy and then paste the address on your browser. You will see an image similar to the one below upon loading your browser. Click on "continue" to customize WordPress for hosting your web pages.

• Next, enter the title of your new site, username, password, and a valid e-mail address. Note that the username and password you choose here are for the WordPress site and not the ones you used for the MySQL database earlier.

Click on Install WordPress to continue

• Now, let's log in with our details

• Once you log in to the WordPress dashboard, you will find a variety of icons and options to customize your website according to your preferences.

C'est fini!!

Congratulations on taking the first step toward creating your own WordPress website on Ubuntu using the powerful LAMP stack! By following this guide, you've set up a flexible and customizable platform for sharing your insights, products, or even services with the world.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful and easy to follow.