Installing WordPress with Nginx on Ubuntu Linux

This tutorial will show you all the steps required to install WordPress with Nginx on Ubuntu Linux.

This tutorial was tested on Ubuntu 18.04.

Table of Contents

Install Nginx on Ubuntu Linux
Install MySQL on Ubuntu Linux
Add PHP support to Nginx
Install WordPress on Ubuntu Linux
Configuring WordPress on Ubuntu Linux

1. Install Nginx on Ubuntu Linux

Use the Ubuntu APT command to install the Nginx server.

# apt-get update
# apt-get install nginx

Edit the nginx.conf configuration file.

Add client_max_body_size to the HTTP section.

Configure the maximum upload size to 32 Megabytes.

# vi /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Here is the file with our configuration.

user www-data;
worker_processes auto;
pid /run/nginx.pid;
include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf;
events {
worker_connections 768;
}
http {
client_max_body_size 32M;
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay on;
keepalive_timeout 65;
types_hash_max_size 2048;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
gzip on;
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

Restart the Nginx web server manually.

# service nginx restart
# service nginx status

Verify the Nginx service status.

● nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2018-12-29 04:29:22 UTC; 1h 17min ago
Docs: man:nginx(8)
Process: 2233 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exited, status
Process: 2221 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/nginx -t -q -g daemon on; master_process on; (code=exite
Main PID: 2238 (nginx)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 1152)
CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service
├─2238 nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on;
└─2239 nginx: worker process

The Nginx web server was installed successfully.

2. Install MySQL on Ubuntu Linux

WordPress requires a database system to store all its configuration.

Use the Ubuntu APT command to install the MySQL server.

# apt-get update
# apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

Use the following command to access the MySQL service console.

# mysql -u root -p

On the MySQL console, you need to perform the following tasks:

• Create a database named wordpress.
• Create a MySQL user account named wordpress.
• Give full control over the wordpress database to the wordpress user.

CREATE DATABASE wordpress CHARACTER SET UTF8 COLLATE UTF8_BIN;
CREATE USER 'wordpress'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'kamisama123';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'wordpress'@'%';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit;

3. Add PHP support to Nginx

Nginx needs an external program to add PHP support.

Use the Ubuntu APT command to install the PHP required packages.

# apt-get update
# apt-get install php7.2-fpm

Use the following command to install the required PHP modules.

# apt-get install php7.2-xml php7.2-curl php7.2-gd php7.2-mbstring php7.2-readline
# apt-get install php7.2-bz2 php7.2-zip php7.2-json php7.2-opcache

Find the location of the PHP configuration file on your system.

Edit the php.ini configuration file.

# updatedb
# locate php.ini
# vi /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini

Your PHP version may not be the same as ours.

Your PHP configuration file location may not be the same as ours.

Here is the file with our configuration.

file_uploads = On
max_execution_time = 300
memory_limit = 256M
post_max_size = 32M
max_input_time = 60
max_input_vars = 4440
upload_max_filesize = 32M

Edit the Nginx default website configuration file.

# vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Here is the original file, before our configuration.

server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
root /var/www/html;
index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
server_name _;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
}

Here is the new file with our configuration.

server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
root /var/www/html;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name _;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
}
location ~ .php$ {
include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
}
}

Verify if your Nginx configuration file has no error.

# nginx -t

nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Restart the PHP service.
Restart the Nginx service.

# service php7.2-fpm restart
# service nginx restart

4. Install WordPress on Ubuntu Linux

After finishing the MySQL and the Apache configuration, we can start the WordPress installation.

Download the WordPress latest version and extract the package.

# cd /tmp
# wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf latest.tar.gz

Move the WordPress folder inside your Apache root drive directory.

Give the www-data user full control over the WordPress directory and its files.

# mv wordpress /var/www/html/
# chown www-data.www-data /var/www/html/wordpress/* -R

Create and edit the WordPress configuration file wp-config.php.

# cd /var/www/html/wordpress
# mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php
# vi wp-config.php

Edit the MySQL database connection information located on the wp-config.file.

As an example, here is the file with our configuration.

define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
define('DB_USER', 'wordpress');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'kamisama123');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');