How To Install WordPress on Ubuntu 12.04

Excellent tutorial. You may need to change the DirectoryIndex when installing Wordpress on a fresh LAMP box so that the index.php file will load. If you point your web browser to your server IP / domain and you only see the “It works” Apache page after installing/configuring Wordpress then you will need to edit the DirectoryIndex so Apache will load index.php as the default webpage. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Go to /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/ directory. To do this, type “cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/” without the quotes.
2. Open the dir.conf file so you can edit it. To do this, type “sudo nano dir.conf” without the quotes.
3. You will see a line of index files (index.html, index.php, index.cgi, etc) under the DirectoryIndex setting. Add index.php as the first item in the list. Doing so will tell Apache to first look for and load an index.php file before looking for the other index file extensions.
4. Press Ctrl+X to save your changes and then press Enter to exit the editor.
5. Restart Apache by typing “sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart” without the quotes.

I followed the above tutorial and found that mysite.com was still showing “It works” after installing Wordpress. I could still access the admin control panel but I was unable to view the blog. Adding index.php as the first file to load in the dir.conf file fixed this issue for me. Hope this helps others as well!

I’ve Just run through this and now getting the error when trying to start up mysql and DB connection error when tryign to access the website. ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ (111) Any ideas what could be causing this

Not sure what to do… :-S

It sounds like MySQL server isn’t running, hence a connection can not be made.

Make sure to install a valid LAMP environment first as detailed in: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu

(L)inux (A)pache (M)ySQL (P)HP

If MySQL is properly installed you can start it with: sudo service mysql start

If it fails you can review the error log for more details /var/log/mysql.err or /var/log/mysql/error.log

Really a fantastic tutorial. I did have to modify dir.conf as suggested above by James Tansley (thanks for that James BTW!!) Can’t recommend this enough. Thanks for the hard word!

Thank you, and thank you, James! Please let me know if there are any further topics you would like to see covered in our community.

Thank You, James Tansley :)))

I tried to install new plugins but it needs ftp connection, of which is possible only through SSH, correct me if Im wrong. However I tried using Filezilla and managed to transfer the plugins folder to /wp-content/plugins. When I checked them on wordpress, the plugins are not there. Any idea whats the problem.

You may be able to install the plugins by temporarily changing the permissions of your web directory to 777 until the plugin is installed. As soon as the plug in has finished installing, the permissions should then be scaled back down to 755.

What is the ‘username’ referred in “sudo usermod -a -G www-data username” line? I’m trying to set up Wordpress on a virtual host so my WP home directory is “/var/www/example.com/public_html”. I’m guessing it might be the “demo” user equivalent or maybe something like “www-data” ? I’m lost, I don’t want to screw up. :)

I keep getting the “usermod : user ‘demo’ does not exist”

i can’t get the Virtual Host on Apache to parse the .php files.

HELP!!!

This is an awesome guide. Most people have you use apt-get, but the permissions end up all wonky and this was so much more straight forward.

WordPress automatic updates + FTP:

For anyone that has followed this tutorial to enable automatic WordPress updates by chown-ing the public folder to www-data, if you’ve setup FTP (i.e. vsftpd), you will notice you will not be able to upload files to that directory by FTP.

To have both automatic updates and FTP uploads working, like all us new-comers are used to with a shared host, run this instead (code adapted to this tutorial):

sudo chown -R www-data:username /var/www

Everything will work as on your ex-shared host: automatic updates, FTP uploads and live file editing, file uploads in WordPress. Maybe this can be added to the tutorial.

I had an issue with permalinks.

Solution :::

1. Enable Mod Rewrite : sudo a2enmod rewrite
2. Change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All : sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
3. Restart Apache : sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

I trust this will help others.

How can I undo this install?

I was running multiple websites using virtual hosts and now it has overwritten so that only the wordpress site is working. I copied the files to the /var/www directory and probably should have created another folder within the www folder. I would like to keep wordpress if possible to use it and learn it but need to have the virtual hosts working. For now until I get some help I copied the new files that this install put in the www folder to a new folder within the www folder called wordpress. /var/www/wordpress, my virtual hosts are working but word press is not. any help would be appreciated.

@James Tansley - thanks for the comment on enabling the index.php. After the wordpress install the home page was getting downloaded rather than rendering in the browser. A simple phpinfo() tag in a file by itself worked fine though. So, your trick did make the wordpress site work fine.

@Michael - thanks for that comment about enabling the rewrite on apache. If your Permalinks are not working this should do the trick.

I followed the initial set up guide to create a user and then the LAMP set up and then finally this wordpress set up guide. I logged into wordpress and clicked on the sample post link and the page loaded fine. Went to alter my permalinks and got the message about manually adding the permalinks… Tried to install a plug in and got the ftp information message.

Followed cosmin’s advice as we as Michael’s and now I can update permalinks and install plugins through the dash board but now any other page than my homepage throws up a 404. “The requested URL /2013/05/13/hello-world/ was not found on this server.”

Any thoughts? I’ve been pulling my hair out with this, previously I’d dived straight into virtual hosts and was getting these issues. Scaled back to just a simple install and still have the problems.

I seem to have it working for the root site now. About to embark on making it work with virtual hosts. This guide could really do with the additional steps adding.

Also wondering - what would be the changes for wordpress on a server with virtual hosts?

@mik.howard: Instead of copying ~/wordpress/* to /var/www, copy it to your virtual host’s DocumentRoot (sudo cp -r ~/wordpress/* /var/www/).

Could someone please include easy to follow instructions like the ones about for setting up WordPress’ notification email system?

@Adam Heward: You need to install an MTA so you can send mail from your droplet - I suggest postfix as it is easy to set up:

apt-get install postfix

Once you have installed it, mail should automatically work.

WordPress automatic updates + FTP:

Wow, all this time and messing with VSFTPD with no success. Thanks for the simple tip. I didn’t need to mess with secure FTP at all. Unfortunately, that was never shown in the WordPress admin screen in one of my old installations, especially when you have multiple locations of WordPress installs for different development projects. This easily helps WordPress update without FTP servers:

sudo chown -R www-data:[user_name] [location_of_WordPress]

If I want to install Wordpress into a sub directory such as ‘wordpress’ what steps do i need to change?

@beardsleym take a look at this: http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory

Hi, I follow your tutorial, all works really good, but when I change the permanlink into post name, the server didn’t work, like 404 error :(

I install apache and config like you guys said :), but i cannot fix that :(

please help

@jacarve run “cp -r ~/wordpress/.* /var/www” - does that fix it? I’ve also updated the article so you don’t have to do this anymore.

Hey @Kamal, since you changed the article to “cp -r ~/wordpress/.* /var/www” can you please help me understand how to give WordPress the write permissions it will need to upload media files etc. Thanks.

@andrew: Replied here - https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/wordpress-multisite-is-unable-to-upload-media-files-because-it-does-not-have-the-necessary-permissions

Please don’t duplicate your questions.

Nice tutorial!!

Just one problem, what’s the “username” in step 4. I installed LNMP, so it should be Nignx user, but how to tell my nignx user name?

"Give ownership of the directory to the apache user. sudo usermod -a -G www-data username "

Much thanks!

@jimingkui nginx runs as www-data as well so the command would be the same.

Thanks for the guide but I’m running into an issue. When attempting to set the password for my new user with “SET PASSWORD FOR wordpressuser@localhost= PASSWORD(“password”); " my shell returns “”>” instead of “Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)”. Not sure what to do.

Never mind. I just realized I made a typo and fixed it. Wish I could edit or delete the previous comment.

Im migrating a wordpress install from another VPS to my droplet and putting it in a directory /var/www/myblog and then with apache virtual hosts pointing a subdomain like myblog.mydomain.com to the document root /var/www/myblog but for some reason I cant get wordpress to connect to the DB. I keep getting the “Error establishing a database connection” wordpress page. I know the DB (root) credentials in wp-config are correct because I can connect to mysql via the command line.

If i change the DB_HOST from localhost to ip-address I get different error messages but both messages say that I cant connect to the DB. 1 message is just a simple PHP output while the other is a nicely formatted Wordpress HTML page.

I am running Ubuntu 12.04, PHP 5.3.10, MySQL 5.5.31, and Wordpress 3.3.2. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?

@aat.rutten: Try creating a user for wordpress instead of using the root credentials - See "Step Two—Create the WordPress Database and User:

Took just <10 mins from start to finish. Never had such a smooth LAMP install before and all kudos goes to your article. Another happy customer. Keep up the good work!!!

It would be good idea to remind people doing the installs to also set the Authentication Unique Key and Salts at the same time they set up the database configuration in the wp-config.php file.

Just got “Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.” Error. Tell me how I can fix it. Thanks!

@Leo: Run “sudo apt-get install php5-mysql”.

@Kamal, great, thanks

Thanks it was perfect tutorial!

GREAT TUTORIAL!!! I went through the tutorial and changed my dir.conf file, but when I go to view my site it is still only showing the IT WORKS!!! screen. I cannot view my page. Any suggestions?

Please disregard my previous post. I got it all figured out. GREAT WORK EVERYONE!!! THANK YOU!!!

The moment when you change permission sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R Yes, you can update the plugins via wordpress admin, but now the problem is i cannot create new folder, upload files via SFTP?

Is there any way where i can upload files/create folder via SFTP and also update plugins via Wordpress admin?

@Dzulhelmi: You shouldn’t chown everything to www-data:www-data. You should chown youruser:www-data and chmod 775 the directories you want to be able to write to.

@Kamal you wrote “@mik.howard: Instead of copying ~/wordpress/* to /var/www, copy it to your virtual host’s DocumentRoot (sudo cp -r ~/wordpress/* /var/www/).”

I don’t understand the command for installing wordpress on a virtual host - which part of this line contains the virtual hosts name do I replace the * or does the virtual host name come after the www/?

sudo cp -r ~/wordpress/* /var/www/

@Kamal, then the tutorial should be update, including the chmod 775 the directories we want to be able to write to

@postcreative: You would set up the virtual host as usual and have the wordpress files copied to its DocumentRoot:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-apache-virtual-hosts-on-ubuntu-12-04-lts

@Dzulhelmi: Sorry, in this case it would be okay for wordpress to be able to write to the /var/www directory since that is how it does its updates/installs themes/etc.

Hello, how do I get my site index to work when wordpress index is there in the root dir. I tried to move it there but I couldn`t. Any idea what I should do?

@felix.johnson: “I tried to move it there but I couldn`t.” - How did you try to move them? What’s the output of this command?

<pre>ls /var/www</pre>

using winscp

I got alot of informations about WP

Hi James tansley, can u guide me on how I can uninstall Wordpress from my vps. Like u said above, it`s true that the folder should be changed when installing wordpress. I read ur post after I have installed it and I installed it in /www/ folder. Now I want to remove it and re-install it on Another folder. Can u help me with the command? thnx

@felix.johnson: What’s the output of this command? <pre>ls /var/www</pre> Connect using SSH, run that command, and paste the output.

I installed wordpress on a domain in the virtual host and everything seem to be working fine so far.

The only problem I have presently is the .htaccess file for the specific wordpress installation. How do i create and edit the .htaccess file for that installation and make it writable.

Regards

@paediatech: The .htaccess file can be found in /var/www/.htaccess

Is there a preferred process for installing Wordpress on DigitalOcean? I see a lot of the same file permission problems and permalink issues on comment streams for both the One-click install and Installing Wordpress on Ubuntu 12.04. Please advise on which has the least issues.

@hughdshields: I recommend starting off with the one-click wordpress install. Enabling permalinks is really easy, take a look at my comment on the one-click wordpress install article:

Posted August 17th, 2013 07:47 https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/one-click-install-wordpress-on-ubuntu-12-10-with-digitalocean

Etel Sverdlov, nice to meet you, we are relatives!

Thanks all for advices and great tutorial :)

Noob question? Sorry if this is dumb but concerning the below;

Give ownership of the directory to the apache user. sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R sudo usermod -a -G www-data ?username?

What do i use for ?username?

Would anybody help me out with this i was guessing but got nowhere. Many thx in advance!

@maarten: Replace ‘username’ with the user you log in as (non-root).

THX! @ Kamal Nasser (it was one of my noob guesses but needed to be sure…)

Excelent! this was my first tutorial followed here on D.O. and everything was fine. I have my WP installed and running. Great job. Thanks

Hello!

I decided to go the route of installing Wordpress with the Wordpress Applications button, onto Ubuntu 12.10.

I’m not having any issues with that whatsoever, other than where it’s being served up from. I’d like to put the files in either /var/www or /home/public_html - but right now it’s in /home/wordpress/public_html

Can you walk me through how I change which folder is “web root”?

THANKS!

@ethan: It’s not recommended to do that as you might run into permissions issues. Out of curiosity, why do you want to do that?

Great Tutorial, Thanks. If you are going to install the set of 8 secret keys in WP, you might consider doing it post install. I missed something in the keys and ended up re-installing WP. There’s a lot of text etc. that’s easy to screw up.

sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R /var/www/[website directory]

has been suggested to fix some problems e.g. can’t upload from admin or add plugins/themes - but what does this do from a security standpoint, yes it fixes the problem but does the solution create additional risk of any sort?

i did the Initial Server Setup, Ubuntu LAMP tutorial and wordpress install steps exactly like the models and when i click the dif pages on my website it appears the message:

Not Found

The requested URL /extension was not found on this server.

Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Server at 82.196.5.88 Port 80

thanks

@k2marketing.steve: It enables the webserver to write to (and delete) any file in the /var/www/[website directory] directory.

@cedulestarragones: Is the mod_rewrite module enabled? See Michael’s permalinks solution above.

This is brilliant… this with your LAMP / Ubuntu post… can’t believe how easy this was… MANY THANKS!

The InnoDB memory heap is disabled. In ubuntu 12.04 with Ram=512

Hi I followed the tutorial and i am able to access http://localhost/wp-admin/ successfully but when i tried to reach http://localhost/ it is still showing me “it works” page. I have already edited apache dir.conf file as suggested by @James Tansley.

Not sure how to fix it ? Any suggestions ?

@ultimaterinks2006: Try deleting the index.html file in /var/www: <pre>rm /var/www/index.html</pre>

I would suggest to do this after the user setup, just for security purposes.

> ~/.mysql_history

Hi,

I’m up to Step Three—Setup the WordPress Configuration but can’t move forward

I use command (exactly the same): cp ~/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php ~/wordpress/wp-config.php

And return: cp: cannot stat `/home/promoter/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php’: No such file or directory (promoter is my username)

Please help Thanks

tnks @cosmin !!! it worked! ;)

@irfantony: What’s the output of <pre>ls -1 /home/promoter/wordpress | grep config</pre>?

Hi Kamal,

command: ls -1 /home/promoter/wordpress | grep config

output: wp-config.php wp-config-sample.php

It seems successfully make a copy file

Btw, what “cannot stat” mean?

Hi guys. Need help here or I’ll jump out the window. Just one question (I’m not going to be brief once that way I can provide more info and narrow choices:

History: installed Ubuntu+WP image, tried to upload theme, oink; had to do it through FTP, tried to install plugin WP CSV, oink, had to create the wpcsv/uploads folder through FTP, tried to import a csv file, oink, blank page. So, went to WP CSV website, and apparently that’s a common error related to WP folders permissions. So, I deleted old droplet, created new one with UBUNTU, with no apps, gone through this tutorial, and here I am, the WP site is successfully installed with my DNS on masking the ip. Cool.

Problems: 1 - I try to install my 14 Mb theme and error message comes up gently asking me “Are you sure you want to do this? Please try again” I try again and the same question pops up. Searched the web and apparently that is a max_upload_size + ,ax_input_time + mas_post_size + max_execution time problem in php.ini file which I already changed to higher values. Restarted apache and voilá… same problem. So, either there is more than one php.ini file and I edited the wrong one (i edited the one located in etc/php5/apache2/php.ini; or there is some kind of problem unzipping .zip files (I don’t know, I’m an amateur) once I’m using ubuntu or something wrong with permissions.

HELP PLEASE?!

oh, and I already edited the upload_max_filesize as well

@irfantony: It means that the file does not exist. Did you manage to fix it?

@postatender: Please don’t jump out the window. :]

Did you restart apache?

Hi, followed the instructions on here and got Wordpress installed. However whenever I publish a post my site goes down and I’m left with an Error Establishing Database Connection message. I can get rid of it by typing ‘sudo server mysql restart’ in putty, but having to do this after every post is getting rather tedious.

Has anybody encountered this before, or know of a way in which I can fix? Cheers

@chriscooper456: Try adding swap to your droplet: <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-add-swap-on-ubuntu-12-04”>https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-add-swap-on-ubuntu-12-04</a>.

root@debian:/home/persu# sudo rsync -avP ~/wordpress/ /var/www/ sudo: rsync: command not found

Is anything wrong in my command ?

@persiu20: Try installing rsync, <code>sudo apt-get install rsync</code>.

OK all is runing. Dou yo have any idea about web server performance testing(NGINX,apache, IIS) ? How to generate traffic from console and what sql queries to make servers slowly? Or other idea?

Last Question. If I installed wordpress on apache , so i dont have to install wordpress second time for nginx? Then i stop apache and run it on Nginx?

Awesome tutorial… after making changed suggested from James Tansley above, everything is working perfectly… thanks again, great job!!

I followed these directions. However, when I got to the second last step where I executed the ‘sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R’ command I had forgotten to first switch to the /var/www directory. I therefore executed it from the root directory. It took some time to execute and gave me a few pages of lines saying operation not permitted on a number of directories/files. I then changed to the /var/www directory and executed it again only to get a message staying ‘sudo: /user/lib/sudo/sudoers.so must be owned by uniden 0’. Have I messed things up??

@Notbiz: Sadly, yes :(. I would set up a new droplet and transfer the files over.

Towards the end of the directions above one is supposed to execute the following:

Sudo user mod -a -G www-data username

My question is - what is the username?

@Notbiz: It’s the username that you usually use to connect to your droplet/transfer files. If you use root for everything, I suggest checking out <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-12-04”>https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-12-04</a> and creating a user.

Install Postfix for outbound mail [Contact7 form]

Re: apt-get install postfix

I did this on WP on Ub 12.1 and chose ‘No Changes’ on the final config. question.

Tried to send email but, got this message:

Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact the administrator by another method

any help gratefully received. Thank you.

@annak: <blockquote>Tried to send email but, got this message: </blockquote>How did you try to send the email? Did you use a plugin?

Try configuring it to use the mail() php function.

The chmod command doesn’t work for me, it’s not actually changing the group permission of the www directory sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R

However this command worked for me when I run it from the var directory sudo chown :www-data www

Now I can finally upload to my server!

I am almost done. Got wordpress installed to the server. Then did the initial wordpress setup - where it asks for your site name etc. made it to the wordpress ‘dashboard’ where you work on your page etc. just a little confused here. It shows I have a theme etc. and it suggests things like adding an about page. However, when I click on the ‘view page’ I just get the default web page from my server (the one that says ‘It Works’). So I am a little confused (and probably somewhat stupid). Did it not create me a basic page withe the site name I provided and with the theme. Did I forget to do something.

Sorry, I got it fixed. I should have read the very first comment to the article. It had the key. Thanks. Although when I restarted apache as noted there I did get the message "could not reliably determine the servers fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for servername. If anyone has an idea about this one I would appreciate comment.

But I am now able to see my web page from the wordpress dashboard!

Omg my LEMP server was totally ok but after i gave the comand chown www-data:www-data * -R my mysql server crashed and it wont load anymore… Digital Ocean has great tutorials but many of them are missing some steps

@lucasmx: It seems like you ran that command in / and broke the permissions of several important files. I would recommend starting over on a new droplet in this case. I’ve also updated the article with a better command.

Hey Kamal,

I have installed everything properly. But editing and adding the index.php from my site folder to the root doesnt leave me with a nice url structure my site is now in a folder as followed: /var/www/mysiteurl/public_html/mywordpressinstall/ --> it shows on mysiteurl correct. Could you direct me to a tutorial or something on setting up public_html outside tthe www folder? thanks

I’d like to add that i want to hide everything after /mysiteurl/ --> i want to see it like this: public_html/mywordpressinstall_folder

I’m getting this error in step 4(Give ownership of the directory to the apache user)

Error message: sudo:unable to resolve host www.bagztra.com

how can i resolve this? thanks

Hey there, I’m faced with the error: Can’t select database

We were able to connect to the database server (which means your username and password is okay) but not able to select the quantifire database.

Are you sure it exists? Does the user quantifire have permission to use the quantifire database? On some systems the name of your database is prefixed with your username, so it would be like username_quantifire. Could that be the problem?

Tried several combinations in terms of configuring the wp-config file but to no avail… :(

@william.lam1: Does the user you’re connecting as have permission to access the quantifire database? Can you access it if you log in as root?

Whenever I upload a file using my root credentials over an ssh connection, wordpress can’t overwrite those files from the admin until I run ‘sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R’ So my question is, is there a way to add my root user to the www-data group so I don’t have to run that every time, or am I better off creating an ssh account for the wordpress user? Thanks a bunch.

@scott: You shouldn’t log in as root unless you need to. Create a new user (<a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-12-04”>https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-12-04</a>) and run the following command: <pre>sudo chown -R youruser:youruser /var/www sudo chmod g+w /var/www sudo usermod -a -G youruser www-data</pre> That should fix it.

Hey Kamal,

Yes I can - I was just following along the instructions that you created…

@william.lam1: What’s the output of <pre>grep -ri ‘define’ /path/to/wp-config.php</pre>? Don’t forget to mask out any sensitive data before posting.

Hello, this tutorial also works for prestashop?

Here is a step by step tutorial: http://wp.me/p3Po0l-hq

Here is a very nice youtube video of the entire process. Really easy to understand and it was fast to setup, a little easier than the install here if you don’t even have LAMP installed.

Oops, here is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiNybMFB_Xg

when I create a database username, it show an issue: ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near

@ichityx: What command did you use? Make sure that it is formatted like:

<pre> CREATE USER wordpressuser@localhost; <pre>

Oh man I’m so confused! :(

I installed WP last week following this tutorial - http://blogerr.net/how-to-install-wordpress-automatically-using-cpanel/ - but I “cheated” a little bit by using Windows OS. Now I want to try installing it again but this time on Ubuntu but I don’t understand the command for installing WordPress on a virtual host! Do I replace the “*” or does the host name come after the “www/” part?

@lsilberman1991: It’s a little unclear what you’re asking. Where are you talking about changing these values? In your Apache configuration, somewhere in cPanel?

After installing Wordpress, my domain address opens the index.html file under:

/var/www/mysite.com/public_html

Wordpress is installed under:

/var/www

To open/access Wordpress, I use my IP address. How do I get my site to open through my domain name, www.mysite.com?

@maistoid: It sounds like your Apache VirtualHost has DocumentRoot set to “/var/www/mysite.com/public_html” You could either move your Wordpress files into that folder or edit you Apache configuration to point to “/var/www”

You configuration is most likely located in a file named something like:

<pre> /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf </pre>

Open it and change the line that reads “DocumentRoot /var/www/mysite.com/public_html” to “DocumentRoot /var/www”

Hi:

I was getting 404 errors after following this guide pretty carefully. Not sure if 14.04 is any different or not, but doing some digging I found the default Apache 2 test page was being served out of /var/www/html

So in step 4 I went back and cp’ed everything to the /var/www/html directory - /var/www/ wasn’t working for me. Followed the rest of the steps and voila! Hope this helps anyone who was stuck like I was

@deekin: Glad to hear you got it working! On 14.04 Apache’s document root has changed to <code>/var/www/html</code>

Tried to install Wordpress, initially with no success. This helped: /etc/apache2/sites-available$ sudo nano 000-default.conf

changing the line starting with DocumentRoot into: DocumentRoot /var/www

And subsequently restarting the Apache2 web server.

thankx…a lot

Hello, I am really glad I found this thread! I am setting up my new BeagleBone Black (vers B not C unfortunately) to be a webserver for a couple of small Wordpress applications. I had started with their new (as of 5/14) Debian distribution but gave up fighting system disk capacity issues. I am happily surprised how much less system space BBB-eMMC-flasher-ubuntu-14.04-console-2014-06-05-2gb takes up. Space is no longer a concern. One quick point to make: I can see some confusion coming about where Wordpress content can be put for virtual hosting. It appears Apache2 looks for /var/www/html or /var/www/public_html/. I want to have WP installed in separate folders and can see myself once again getting all tangled up in what goes where, and especially setting permissions correctly. I’ve had some real headaches with Lighttp/Sqlite3/WP efforts along those lines. Glad this thread is still alive and supported! I’m sure I’ll have a question or three along the way. Thanks much.

After the installation, i couldn’t see the wordpress install page. After some research i rallied that my “DocumentRoot” was set to /var/www/html. Because of that when i tries to reach the wordpress server, it was looking at /var/www/html/wp-admin/install.php which wasn’t there. So i changed the sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf file and set the “DocumentRoot” to /var/www and it started working. Just to let you know.

I did this all, but just tried going to my IP address with /wp-admin/install.php attached at the end. I get an error message, and I see that it says “Port 80” and I’m afraid that has to do with it… (I changed my port during my LAMP setup…) How do I set it back? Here’s the error message:

Not Found: The requested URL /wp-admin/install.php was not found on this server. Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) Server at 107.170.128.41 Port 80

@ccapik: Try browsing to http://107.170.128.41:port/wp-admin/install.php where port is the port you chose when you set up Apache.

edit: Have you changed SSH’s port or Apache’s?

Okay everything goes smooth until i reach to the step where i have to enter sudo chown username:www-data /var/www -R

my username is WP sudo chown ‘WP’:www-data /var/www -R i get the error chown: invalid user: ‘WP:www-data’

i am in /var/www

Help please!

@omerkhan.nu: You need to run the command without the quotes:

sudo chown WP:www-data /var/www -R

If that doesn’t work, try setting the owner and group ownership separately:

sudo chown WP /var/www -R
sudo chgrp www-data /var/www -R

My website is an OpenCart with a customized Theme from Themeforest. I don’t know if I should follow all the steps of installing the WordPress.

I think I just need to migrate the all the files under public_html and import the MySQL.

“Give ownership of the directory to the apache user.” - This is a big no no Etel Sverdlov.

We need to set collation to utf8.

is this faster than using https://serverpilot.io which installs nginx on your droplet? i want it fastest possible and people say to use serverpilot.

Thanks for the tutorial! Is it possible that one actually needs to copy the wordpress files into /var/www/html/ or a subfolder of it to make it accessible online?

Otherwise, I could not load /var/www/wp-admin/wp-config.php from a browser.

Thanks.

on the sudo chown username:www-data /var/www -R step I am putting in the correct username, but am getting the error "chown: invalid option – ‘r’

What am I doing wrong?

Yes,

script ‘/var/www/html/info/php’ not found or unable to stat

This is good and informative post. it will help many users. To read another very good article illustrating easy steps to install wordpress with proper images is available here http://smileitsolutions.com/how-to-install-wordpress/

Thanks!

awesome article! thanks guys…I had one hickup with the “IT WORKS” page displaying, but got it sorted by editing sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf and changing DocumentRoot /var/www/html to DocumentRoot /var/www/

Shanana!

I successfully created new user and installed LAMP but I have the mistake when I try to get Wordpress installation file.

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz leads me to:

Connecting to wordpress.org (wordpress.org)|66.155.40.249|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 6051082 (5.8M) [application/octet-stream]
latest.tar.gz: Permission denied

Cannot write to 'latest.tar.gz' (Success).
wp@PickByPic:/root$ 

Please help.

Additional Information that you need to add in this tutorial is. If you use Apache 2. You need to change the line as below codes. I struck on 404 more than one hrs for find the solution from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21831272/i-need-var-www-but-apache2-try-to-use-an-empty-var-www-html

sudo rsync -avP ~/wordpress/ /var/www/

to

sudo rsync -avP ~/wordpress/ /var/www/html

Im unable to access the page when tried to navigate to http://localhost/wp-admin/install.php I followed all the steps as specified in tutorial and also moved the index.php to front in dir.conf file as per Jtansley comment. May I know what am I missing?

Thanks, Anand

hi there,

I followed all the instructions (set up cloud server with lamp stack : succesful)

I have trouble with the wordpress installation. when checking my.ip.add.ress/wp-admin/install.php i get a not found page.

As you suggested to another user in the comment section, when typing cp -r ~/wordpress/.* /var/www, i get the error : cp: will not create hard link /var/www/wordpress to directory /var/www/

any help much appreciated

thanks

patricia

On step four, who is the apache user, or how do I find this out?

"Give ownership of the directory to the apache user. sudo chown username:www-data /var/www -R sudo chmod g+w /var/www -R "

Thanks

i keep getting error 404 The requested URL /wp-admin was not found on this server.

i followed initial configuratin tutorial & LAMP & phpmyadmin here also index.php has proiority . thanks

I am getting an error while trying to install plugins or themes. I have installed LAMP on ubuntu 14.04 using this tutorial: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu . Next i installed wordpress by following the above instructions. Now while installing a theme or plugin i get an error message saying “could not create directory”. Can anyone help me with this ? Thanks

this does not work, after following all the tutorial steps i can’t get open any wordpress admin, this tutorial is incomplete or needs to clarify what to do after following all those steps

I did all the steps and Im getting this error in the webpage:

“Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.” help please.

Hi, I’m stuck on the last step. When I try to access /wp-admin/install.php by attaching it to my server ip in a browser window, I get a file not found error.

Thanks jtansley you saved my day.

Hi Etel,

Please add this to your tutorial. And thanks for the hand-holding…

We can use single click WordPress installer for vps or cloud servers. Please check https://cmsget.org