Deploying Wordpress

This is a basic guide on how to install wordpress on Debian 11 manually, there is an easier way to deploy wordpress via docker

Install MariaDB

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server -y

Now log into the database

sudo mysql

Create the wordpress database, and then create a wordpress user that will have access to it. Be sure to change the passwordHere text.

CREATE database wordpress;
GRANT ALL ON `wordpress`.* to wordpress@localhost identified by 'passwordHere';

Install Apache and PHP

sudo apt-get install -y \
  apache2 libapache2-mod-php7.0 \
  php7.0-cli php7.0-mysql

Download wordpress

wget https://wordpress.org/latest.zip

Optional - Create Wordpress SSH User

I use SSH to update my wordpress instances, and wish to use a non-sudo user to do this. Thus I will create a wordpress user at this point.

sudo adduser wordpress

Install Wordpress

sudo apt-get install unzip -y \
  && unzip latest.zip \
  && sudo mkdir -p /var/www/wordpress \
  && sudo mv wordpress /var/www/wordpress/public_html \
  && sudo chown -R wordpress:www-data -R /var/www/wordpress \
  && sudo chmod 750 -R /var/www/wordpress

Set Umask and Add to Group

Lets set the umask and add the www-data user to the wordpress group, so that if the wordpress user creates files, the apache server can still read them.

sudo adduser www-data wordpress \
  && cd /var/www/wordpress \
  && umask 027

Using umask of 027 means that new files will have 740 (-rwxr-----) permissions, but new directories will have 750 (-rwxr-x---).

Update Apache

sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Replace it with:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

    DocumentRoot /var/www/wordpress/public_html
    <Directory /var/www/wordpress/public_html/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

    # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel warn

    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

This assumes this webserver is dedicated to just serving up the wordpress site. E.g. a VPS.

Restart apache for the changes to take effect

sudo service apache2 restart

Optional - Enable URL Rewrite

Your more than likely to want this feature. If you're unsure, I would err on the side of enabling it.

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo service apache2 restart