How to install WordPress on Ubuntu server 12.04

Step One—Download WordPress

Type the command in your terminal

sudo apt-get install apache php5 unzip mysql-client mysql-server php-mysql

Now CD (change directory) to the directory you want to download on your server. I want to download my wordpress into the directory called public. Type in terminal

cd /my/directory/public/

Type in terminal to get latest version of wordpress

sudo wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip

Now unzip it in terminal by typing

sudo unzip latest.zip

If you don’t have unzip installed on your server, you can get it by typing in terminal

sudo apt-get install unzip

After we unzip the wordpress files, the files will be in a directory called wordpress in the directory you downloaded wordpress like below:

/my/directory/public/wordpress

REMEMBER TO UNZIP THE WORDPRESS EITHER INTO ROOT OF YOUR SERVER PUBLIC DIRECTORY IF YOU WANT YOUR TOP LEVEL DOMAIN AS YOUR WORDPRESS  WEBSITE LIKE BELOW

www.example.com/

OR INTO A SUB DIRECTORY UNDER ROOT OF YOUR SERVER PUBLIC DIRECTORY IF YOU WANT TO ACCESS YOUR WORDPRESS LIKE BELOW

www.example.com/wordpress/

Also make sure that,  the wordpress directory and files and folders recursively have full permission for your user,  the group that your user belongs to, and for other users. By default the owner will be root and group will be root as well. If you don’t have sufficient permission, wordpress will give you errors during our installation process.

Step Two—Create the WordPress Database and User

Now, there are various ways to create MySQL database for wordpress installation. But the easy option is to use phpmyadmin. This guide is beyond the scope of how to  install phpmyadmin. There will be another guide on how to install phpmyadmin.

Once you do have phpmyadmin goto your phpmyadmin url which will be something like below

www.example.com/phpmyadmin

It’s always a good idea to create  an user in phpmyadmin as the same name as your server user. And don’t forget to setup a strong password for your phpmyadmin user.

We’ll create an user by selecting Privileges from phpmyadmin top menu

Now select

From Add New User window do the following as the pictures illustrate

In the above picture the password is test123, do not use this, user a strong one.

Scroll down and do the following as the picture

Yes we checked all as checkboxes. Because we want our new user to have full permission on this wordpress database.

Now click Create User

This is NOT A MISTAKE that we didn’t type anything into those text boxes in the above picture.

Now Click Database

Type in the database name and click Create button

That’s it now you can logout from phpmyadmin.

Step Three—Setup the FTP Server for WordPress

You can omit this section if you do have any ftp server setup already on your server.

Otherwise do the following to install ftp server called vsftd.

sudo apt-get install vsftpd

Now edit your vsftpd.conf file in order to disable anonymous connections and allowing your user to upload files to your server:

sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf

By default anonymous connections are allowed. So, you should change the following line and have it in this way:
anonymous_enable=NO

Also, by default, local system users are not allowed to login to FTP server. To change this setting, you should uncomment the following line:
#local_enable=YES

In the same way, users are allowed to download files from FTP server, but they are not allowed to upload files to FTP server. To change this setting, you should uncomment the following line:
#write_enable=YES

Save the changes made and start the vsftpd daemon running the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd start

If you receive error during wordpress installation

wordpress Username/Password incorrect

Then just restart vsftpd daemon

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart

Step Four—Setup the WordPress Configuration

Now we will configure our wordpress configuration file. This procedure also stop WordPress asking for FTP details every time you install or delete plugins.

So in terminal CD(=change directory) to our wordpress directory

cd /my/directory/public/wordpress

And type in terminal

sudo nano wp-config.php

Add the lines below at the bottom of this file

define('FTP_HOST', 'localhost');
define('FTP_USER', ‘jon');
define('FTP_PASS', ‘password’);

Here, “localhost” as our FTP host.

“jon” as our FTP user, which is the user of my server under which I’m installing this wordpress.

And “password” as our FTP user’s password  which is the password of my user named “jon”.

Remember, this user and password is not related to phpmyadmin database username and password. This username and password above are the one that you use to login to your server.

Also add the line as well at the bottom of this file

define('FS_METHOD','direct');

This line will help wordpress to create necessary directories when you want to install any plugin(s).

If you receive error during wordpress installation with ftp

failed to connect to ftp server localhost 21 wordpress

then your details in the wp-config.php as mentioned above are not correct. CHECK YOUR FTP USER AND PASSWORD and then try again!!

Step Five—Install the WordPress from browser

Finally, on any browser type in

www.example.com/wordpress/

Then you should be able to see the wordpress installation screen. I’ll show some pictures below.

Click Let’s Go!

Here, type in database name which you created earlier in phpmyadmin, username, password and localhost. Leave the Table Prefix as it is.

So in our case, Database Name = wordpress, User Name = test, Password = test123

Click Submit button

Click Run the Install button.

Now wordpress is asking us to put a Website Title and administrator username, password and email. Please keep these safe.

Click Install WordPress button. And after all of these daunting tasks we’re done!!! It’s just for you to login as administrator and start using your wordpress site!

IF YOU SEE ANY ERRORS PLEASE SEE THE SECTIONS IN RED ABOVE TO MATCH YOUR ERRORS AND FIX IT ACCORDINGLY.