Installing WordPress on Ubuntu 20.04

WordPress is a popular open-source content management system (CMS) that allows you to create and manage websites easily. In this guide, we will walk you through the installation of WordPress on Ubuntu 20.04.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following:

• An Ubuntu 20.04 server
• A non-root user with sudo privileges
• LAMP stack installed (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP)

Step 1: Create a MySQL Database and User

First, log in to your MySQL server with the command:

sudo mysql

Once you are logged in to MySQL, create a new database for your WordPress installation:

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

Next, create a new user and grant it all privileges on the database you just created. Replace 'username' and 'password' with your desired values:

CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'username'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Exit MySQL by typing:

EXIT;

Step 2: Download and Configure WordPress

Change to your web server's document root directory:

cd /var/www/html

Download the latest version of WordPress:

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

Extract the downloaded file:

sudo tar -xf latest.tar.gz

Once the extraction is complete, copy the WordPress files to a new directory with a name of your choice. In this example, we will use 'mywordpress' as the directory name:

sudo cp -R wordpress mywordpress

Change ownership of the WordPress files to your web server user. For Apache, the user is typically 'www-data':

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data mywordpress

Now, rename the 'wp-config-sample.php' file to 'wp-config.php':

cd mywordpress
sudo mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Edit the 'wp-config.php' file:

sudo nano wp-config.php

Locate the section that contains the database information:

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define( 'DB_NAME', 'database_name_here' );

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

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

Replace 'database_name_here', 'username_here', and 'password_here' with your database name, username, and password that you created in Step 1.

Save and close the file by pressing Ctrl+X, followed by Y and Enter.

Step 3: Configure Apache Virtual Host

Create a new Apache configuration file for your WordPress site:

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

Add the following content to the file:

  ServerAdmin [email protected]
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/mywordpress
  ServerName example.com
  ServerAlias www.example.com

  
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
  

  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

Replace '[email protected]', 'example.com', and 'www.example.com' with your desired email address, domain name, and www domain.

Save and close the file.

Enable the newly created virtual host:

sudo a2ensite mywordpress.conf

Reload Apache for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl reload apache2

Step 4: Complete WordPress Installation

Open your web browser and enter your domain name in the address bar. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the WordPress installation.

Conclusion

Congratulations! You have successfully installed WordPress on your Ubuntu 20.04 server. You can now start building your website using the powerful features of WordPress.