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Serdar Tekin
Serdar Tekin

Posted on • Originally published at rafftechnologies.com

How to Install WordPress on Ubuntu 24.04 with Nginx

#wordpress #webdev #devops #tutorial

WordPress still powers over 40% of the web. Love it or hate it, if you host sites for clients or run your own, you need to know how to set it up properly on a modern stack.

This tutorial walks you through a clean WordPress installation on Ubuntu 24.04 using Nginx, PHP-FPM, and MariaDB — the full LEMP stack. No Docker, no control panels. Just a fast, production-ready setup you fully control.

By the end, you'll have WordPress running on Nginx with pretty permalinks, static asset caching, and a properly secured database.

Prerequisites

  • An Ubuntu 24.04 VPS with at least 1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM
  • SSH access to your server
  • A registered domain name pointed to your server (recommended)

Step 1 — Install Nginx

Update packages and install Nginx:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nginx
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Enable it at boot and verify:

sudo systemctl enable nginx
sudo systemctl status nginx
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You should see active (running).

Step 2 — Install MariaDB 

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server
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Run the security hardening script:

sudo mysql_secure_installation
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Press Enter for current root password, type n for unix_socket auth, set a strong root password, then Y to everything else — removes anonymous users, disables remote root login, drops the test database, reloads privileges.

Step 3 — Create the WordPress Database 

sudo mariadb
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CREATE DATABASE wordpress DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'wpuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'strong_password_here';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'wpuser'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;
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Replace strong_password_here with an actual secure password. The utf8mb4 charset gives you full Unicode support including emojis.

Step 4 — Install PHP-FPM and Extensions

WordPress needs several PHP extensions for image processing, database access, and XML parsing:

sudo apt install -y php-fpm php-mysql php-curl php-gd php-intl php-mbstring \
  php-soap php-xml php-xmlrpc php-zip php-imagick php-common
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Verify PHP-FPM is running:

sudo systemctl status php8.3-fpm
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Step 5 — Download and Configure WordPress

Download and extract WordPress:

cd /tmp
curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
sudo tar -xzf latest.tar.gz -C /var/www/
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Set ownership for Nginx:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/wordpress
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Create the config file:

cd /var/www/wordpress
sudo -u www-data cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php
sudo nano /var/www/wordpress/wp-config.php
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Update the database credentials:

define( 'DB_NAME', 'wordpress' );
define( 'DB_USER', 'wpuser' );
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'strong_password_here' );
define( 'DB_HOST', 'localhost' );
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Generate unique authentication keys by visiting https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ and replacing the placeholder lines in wp-config.php.

⚠️ Never leave the default placeholder keys in production. They protect your login cookies and session data.

Step 6 — Configure the Nginx Server Block

Create the server block. Replace your_domain_or_ip with your actual domain or server IP:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/wordpress
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server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    server_name your_domain_or_ip;
    root /var/www/wordpress;
    index index.php index.html;

    client_max_body_size 64M;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico {
        log_not_found off;
        access_log off;
    }

    location = /robots.txt {
        log_not_found off;
        access_log off;
        allow all;
    }

    location ~* \.(css|gif|ico|jpeg|jpg|js|png|svg|woff|woff2|ttf|eot)$ {
        expires 30d;
        add_header Cache-Control "public, no-transform";
    }
}
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What this does:

  • client_max_body_size 64M — allows media uploads up to 64 MB
  • try_files — enables WordPress pretty permalinks
  • PHP requests routed to PHP-FPM via Unix socket
  • Static assets cached for 30 days

Enable the site and remove the default config:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/wordpress /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
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Test and reload:

sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx
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Step 7 — Configure the Firewall

Allow HTTP traffic:

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'
sudo ufw status
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💡 After setting up SSL with Let's Encrypt, switch to Nginx Full to allow both HTTP and HTTPS.

Step 8 — Complete the WordPress Installation

Navigate to http://your_domain_or_ip in your browser. The WordPress installation wizard will appear. Fill in your site title, admin username (avoid "admin"), a strong password, and your email.

Click Install WordPress, then log in.

💡 First things after login: go to Settings → Permalinks → select "Post name" for SEO-friendly URLs. Then install a security plugin like Wordfence.

Step 9 — Verify and Optimize

Confirm everything works:

curl -I http://your_domain_or_ip
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You should see HTTP/1.1 200 OK with X-Powered-By: PHP/8.3.

For production, consider:

  • SSL: sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx then sudo certbot --nginx -d your_domain
  • PHP tuning: Increase memory_limit to 256M and upload_max_filesize to 64M in /etc/php/8.3/fpm/php.ini
  • Caching: Install WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache

Conclusion

You've got a clean WordPress installation running on a modern LEMP stack — Nginx, PHP-FPM 8.3, and MariaDB on Ubuntu 24.04. No bloated control panels, no shared hosting limitations. Full control.

From here: add SSL with Let's Encrypt, install your theme, and start publishing.

I'm Serdar, co-founder of Raff — affordable and reliable cloud infrastructure built to be the one platform your app needs — compute, storage, and beyond. Originally published on the Raff Technologies blog.

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