Host your own website using WordPress on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the process of installing WordPress on a Debian system, configuring Apache as the web server. Let’s get started!

Step 1: Update the System

Before we begin, let’s ensure that the system is up to date:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Step 2: Upgrade to PHP 8.2

Check your PHP version, if it is not installed we will do that in the next step anyway:

php –v

Now, upgrade to the latest stable version, in this case PHP 8.2:

sudo apt install -y lsb-release ca-certificates apt-transport-https software-properties-common gnupg2

echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sury-php.list

sudo wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg

sudo apt update

Step 3: Remove Old Versions of PHP and Install PHP Extensions

Remove old PHP versions:

sudo apt remove php php-common php-mysql php-gmp php-curl php-intl php-mbstring php-xmlrpc php-gd php-xml php-cli php-zip libapache2-mod-php

Install PHP extensions:

sudo apt install php php-common php-mysql php-gmp php-curl php-intl php-mbstring php-xmlrpc php-gd php-xml php-cli php-zip

Step 4: Configure PHP for WordPress

Open the PHP configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/php/8.2/apache2/php.ini

Change the following values (you can use ‘ctrl+w’ in nano to search):

max_execution_time = 300

upload_max_filesize = 100M

post_max_size = 128M

Step 5: Install MariaDB

Install MariaDB, a powerful database server:

sudo apt install -y mariadb-server mariadb-client

sudo systemctl start mariadb

sudo systemctl enable mariadb

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Follow the interactive prompts to secure your MariaDB installation.

Step 6: Create Databases and Users

Create a database for WordPress and a user with privileges:

sudo mysql -u root -p

In the MySQL shell, run the following commands, being sure to create a unique password:

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

CREATE USER 'wp_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'Passw0rd';

GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO 'wp_user'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

EXIT;

Step 7: Download and Configure WordPress

Navigate to the web root directory:

cd /var/www/html/

Download the latest WordPress release:

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

sudo tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wordpress/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/wordpress/

sudo rm latest.tar.gz

Step 8: Create a Virtual Host File

Create a virtual host configuration file:

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

Add the following configuration, being sure to change servername, serveralias, serveradmin and documentroot if it is different:

Step 9: Enable the Site and Modules

Enable the site and activate the necessary modules:

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

sudo a2ensite wordpress

sudo a2enmod rewrite ssl headers

Restart Apache for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 10: Complete WordPress Installation

Open your web browser and navigate to your server’s URL. Follow the WordPress installation wizard:

• Database Name: wordpress
• Username: wp_user
• Password: (the password you set during the database creation)
• Table Prefix: wp_

Once the installation is complete, create a user and a strong password to access the WordPress admin interface. You can do this by navigating to the URL followed by “/wp-admin/”.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully installed WordPress on your Debian server.

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