Install WordPress using NGINX

What’s up guys this is Harshith and in this article, I am going to show how you can set up WordPress using NGINX.

Prerequisites

Knowledge about basic Linux Commands
A server (A VM will do)

First Install the dependencies required for Nginx to run

sudo apt install nginx

Then install PHP and its dependencies

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

We will also need MySQL to act as a Database

sudo apt install mysql-server

open MySQL using

sudo mysql

Then create a database and User and grant all the rights to the user

mysql> CREATE DATABASE {wordpress} DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
mysql> CREATE USER '{wordpressuser}'@'{localhost}' IDENTIFIED BY '{password}';
mysql> GRANT ALL ON {wordpress}.* TO '{wordpressuser}'@'localhost';
mysql> exit;

After this navigate to

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available

and create a new file without any extension using sudo nano {wp1}

and add the following

server {
 listen 8090 default_server;
 listen [::]:8090 default_server;
 root /var/www/wp1;
 index index.php;

 server_name _;

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

 # pass PHP scripts to FastCGI server

 location ~ \.php$ {
  include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
  fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
 }

 location ~ /\.ht {
  deny all;
 }
}

Here we are specifying /var/www/wp1 as our folder where the wordpress config files live

But the folder doesn’t exist yet and it can be created using

cd /var/www

and then download the WordPress folder from

https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

We can also download the Archive using a web browser but I will be using wget

sudo wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

when you list the files inside the folder using ls

You will see the file latest.tar.gz

create a new folder and extract the archive using

sudo tar -xzvf ../latest.tar.gz ./ --strip-components=1

The --strip-components=1 flag is to extract the archive without including the root folder of the archive, here wordpress

Now copy the wp-config-sample.php to a new file

called wp-config.php using

sudo cp ./wp-config-sample.php ./wp-config.php

then You will need to update the values inside wp-config.php with the database name, username, password

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define( 'DB_NAME', 'wp_db' );

/** MySQL database username */
define( 'DB_USER', 'wp_db_admin' );

/** MySQL database password */
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'notPassword' );

/** 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', '' );

Then copy the content from https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ and update it here

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' );

The below addition will enable you to create files as a user

define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');

Now we need to fix the permissions of the folder using this command

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data ./*

Make sure to execute this inside the WordPress folder

The -R flag is to set the permissions to be recursive and affect all sub-folders

Then change the Read/Write permission to

sudo chmod -R 755 ./*

Now let’s go back to the NGINX config folder

cd /etc/nginx/site-available

Now we need to to link the file to a new folder called sites-enabled

To do that execute the following

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/wp1 /etc/nginx/sites-available/wp1

Although we can use sudo ln -s ./wp1 ../sites-enabled/wp1 this is not recommended

Now check if the config file is valid using

sudo nginx -t

Output →

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

then reload the NGINX service using

sudo systemctl restart nginx.service

then go to your web browser and open the website

That’s All! If you want to know if the permissions are working go to the Dashboard and view it under Site health under the Info Tab