Install WordPress with Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04 / Debian 9

Today’s guide is a step-by-step Installation of WordPress with Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04 / Debian 9 Linux system. WordPress is the most popular, advanced, feature-rich and open-source content management system written in PHP. WordPress stores its data in MySQL relational database.

Though wordpress is more known to be a blogging platform, it supports other types of web content management like media galleries, forums,  mailing lists, and E-commerce. If you’re trying to find the best Content Management system for your site or blog, give WordPress a shot, you’ll probably love it.

Install WordPress with Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04 / Debian 9

Follow steps below to install Wordpress with Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04 / Debian 9.

Step 1: Install MariaDB / MySQL Database Server

You can choose to use MariaDB or MySQL database server. We’ll install MariaDB database server:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mariadb-server

After the installation of the database server access root user shell:

sudo mysql -u root

Create a database and user for WordPress

CREATE USER 'wp_user'@'localhost' identified by 'StrongPassword';
CREATE DATABASE wp_db;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wp_db.* TO 'wp_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Don’t forget to replace StrongPassword with your database user password.

Confirm if the user can connect to the database with the provided password:

$ mysql -u wp_user -p
Enter password: <ENTER PASSWORD>
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 34
Server version: 10.1.34-MariaDB-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 Ubuntu 18.04

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> SHOW DATABASES;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| wp_db              |
+--------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> QUIT
Bye

Step 2: Install  PHP and required Extensions

The default PHP available on both Ubuntu 18.04 and Debian 9 is supported by WordPress. We’ll install PHP and required extensions such as fpm,mysql,zip e.t.c.

sudo apt install php php-{fpm,pear,cgi,common,zip,mbstring,net-socket,gd,xml-util,mysql,gettext,bcmath}

Step 3: Install Nginx Web Server

Now that you have a database for WordPress created, we can install Nginx web server before downloading and configuring WordPress.

Install Nginx on Ubuntu 18.04 or Debian 9 by running below command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx

Step 4: Download and Install  WordPress

Download the latest release of WordPress:

sudo apt install wget vim
wget wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Extract the archive file

tar xvf latest.tar.gz

Move the resulting directory to your Web Document Root

sudo mv wordpress /srv/myblog

Configure WordPress Database connection

cd  /srv/myblog
sudo cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php
sudo vim wp-config.php

Edit  wp-config.php

define('DB_NAME', 'wp_db');
define('DB_USER', 'wp_user');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'StrongPassword');

Change ownership of /srv/myblog to web user:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /srv/myblog

Step 5: Configure Nginx and Finish WordPress installation

We need to create a Virtual Host configuration file for our WordPress website.

sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/myblog.conf

Add content like below:

##################################
# WORDPRESS NGINX CONFIGURATIONS
##################################

server {
listen 80;
root /srv/myblog;
server_name example.com;
access_log /var/log/nginx/wp_client_access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/wp_client_error.log;

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

# Specify a charset
        charset                         utf-8;
# GZIP
        gzip                            off;

# Add trailing slash to */wp-admin requests.
        rewrite /wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent;

# Prevents hidden files (beginning with a period) from being served
location ~ /\. {
        access_log                      off;
        log_not_found                   off;
        deny                            all;
}

###########
# SEND EXPIRES HEADERS AND TURN OFF 404 LOGGING
###########

        location ~* ^.+.(xml|ogg|ogv|svg|svgz|eot|otf|woff|mp4|ttf|css|rss|atom|js|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|ppt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf)$ {
        access_log                      off;
        log_not_found                   off;
        expires                         max;
}

# Pass all .php files onto a php-fpm or php-cgi server
location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files                       $uri =404;
        include                         /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_read_timeout            3600s;
        fastcgi_buffer_size             128k;
        fastcgi_buffers                 4 128k;
        fastcgi_param                   SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_pass                    unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
        #fastcgi_pass                   unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index                   index.php;
}

# ROBOTS

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

# RESTRICTIONS
location ~* /(?:uploads|files)/.*\.php$ {
 deny all;
}
}

  Verify the configuration syntax:

$ sudo nginx -t
nginx: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful

Restart Nginx Web server

sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx

Visit the WordPress installation wizard page on https://example.com to finish installation.

1. Select Language

2. Provide Site Title, Admin username, Password and Email Address

3 Click Install WordPress button to finish WordPress Installation.

4. Login to the WordPress Administration Dashboard with the set username and Password

You should get to WordPress Dashboard which looks like below.

Check our article on how to use Gmail SMTP with WordPress:

• Configure WordPress To Use Gmail using WP Mail SMTP

If you need WordPress Multisite Network  Setup, refer to the guide below:

How To Setup WordPress Multisite Network installation

For Caddy Web Server, see:

How to Host WordPress website with Caddy Web Server