Free Tier: Install WordPress on an Ubuntu Instance

Connect to the Ubuntu instance and configure the firewall settings. Follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Free Tier account.
2. Open the navigation menu and click Compute. Under Compute, click Instances.
3. Click the link to the instance you created in the previous step.

   From the Instance Access section, write down the Public IP Address the system created for you. You use this IP address to connect to the instance.

4. Open a Terminal window.
5. Change into the directory where you stored the ssh encryption keys you created in part 1.
6. Connect to the VM with this SSH command.

   ssh -i <your-private-key-file> ubuntu@<your-public-ip-address>

   Since you identified your public key when you created the VM, this command logs you into the VM. You can now issue sudo commands to install and start the server.

7. Update firewall settings.

   Next, update the iptables configuration to allow HTTP traffic. To update iptables, run the following commands.

   sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

   sudo netfilter-persistent save

   The commands add a rule to allow HTTP traffic and saves the changes to the iptables configuration files.

1. Install Apache Server.

   sudo apt update

   sudo apt -y install apache2

2. Next start Apache.

   sudo systemctl restart apache2

3. You can now test the server.

   You can test the server from the command line with curl localhost. Or, you can connect your browser to the public IP address assigned to the VM: http://<your-public-ip-address>. The page looks similar to:

1. Install PHP and then some helpful modules with the following commands.

   sudo apt -y install php

   sudo apt -y install php-mysql php-curl php-gd php-zip

2. Verify installation and restart Apache.

   php -v

   sudo systemctl restart apache2

3. Add a PHP test file to the VM.

   sudo vi /var/www/html/info.php

4. In the file, input the following text and save the file:

   <?php
   phpinfo();
   ?>

5. Connect to http://<your-public-ip-address>/info.php.

   The browser produces a listing of the PHP configuration on the VM similar to the following.

   Tip
   
   The image will differ due to operating system updates.
   

   You have successfully installed Apache and PHP on an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure instance.

   Note
   
   After you are done testing, delete the info.php file.

Set up the Apache server to read and write from the /var/www/html directory.

1. Add a username to the www-data group so you can edit the /var/www/html directory.

   sudo adduser $USER www-data

2. Now change the ownership of the content directory.

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

3. Change permissions on the files and directory.

   sudo chmod -R g+rw /var/www/html

4. Reboot your machine for changes to take effect.

Next, you install and configure the MySQL server and client so it can be used with WordPress.

1. Install the MySQL Server package.

   sudo apt -y install mysql-server

   This step can take some time.

2. Sign in to MySQL.

   sudo mysql

3. Change the MySQL root user to allow password authentication.

   mysql> ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY '<your-password>';

   Note
   
   This password is temporary. You reset the root password in the following steps.
4. Exit MySQL.

   mysql> exit

5. Secure MySQL with the mysql_secure_installation script.
   1. Run the script.

      sudo mysql_secure_installation

      Produces this output:

      Securing the MySQL server deployment.

   2. You are prompted for the temporary password you set.

      Enter password for user root:

      Enter the password.

   3. Turn on Password Validation:

      
      VALIDATE PASSWORD COMPONENT can be used to test passwords
      and improve security. It checks the strength of password
      and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
      secure enough. Would you like to set up VALIDATE PASSWORD component?
      
      Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No:    
                          

   4. Select Y.
   5. Select the password validation level.

      
      There are three levels of password validation policy:
      
      LOW    Length >= 8
      MEDIUM Length >= 8, numeric, mixed case, and special characters
      STRONG Length >= 8, numeric, mixed case, special characters and dictionary file
      
      Please enter 0 = LOW, 1 = MEDIUM and 2 = STRONG:                        
                          

   6. Change the root password.

      Using existing password for root.
                                      
      Estimated strength of password: XX
      Change the password for root ? ((Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) :                            

   7. Select Y.
   8. Set the root password.

      
      New password: 
      
      Re-enter new password: 
      
      Estimated strength of the password: 100 
      Do you wish to continue with the password provided?(Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) :
                          

      Note
      
      This step replaces the initial temporary password set earlier.
   9. Select Y.
   10. Select the remaining security options.

       
       Remove anonymous users? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : 
       Disallow root login remotely? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : 
       Remove test database and access to it? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : 
       Reload privilege tables now? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : 
       Success.
       
       All done! 
                           

       Tip
       
       Taking the default values, Y to all options, is recommended.
6. Sign in to MySQL with the new password.

   mysql -u root -p

7. Change the MySQL authentication method back to auth_socket.

   mysql> ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH auth_socket;

   Tip
   
   The auth_socket authentication method allows you to authenticate with sudo rather than with a MySQL password.
8. Exit MySQL.

   mysql> exit

1. Sign in to MySQL.

   sudo mysql

   You get a MySQL prompt.

2. List the default databases.

   mysql> show databases;
   +--------------------+
   | Database           |
   +--------------------+
   | information_schema |
   | mysql              |
   | performance_schema |
   | sys                |
   +--------------------+
   4 rows in set (0.01 sec)
                       

3. Create a user for MySQL.

   mysql> CREATE USER '<your-user-name>'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<your-password>';
   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

4. Make the user an admin.

   mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO '<your-user-name>'@'localhost';
   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
                       

5. Create the WordPress database.

   mysql> create database wpdb;
   Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)
                       

6. Check the result.

   mysql>show databases;
   +--------------------+
   | Database           |
   +--------------------+
   | information_schema |
   | mysql              |
   | performance_schema |
   | sys                |
   | wpdb               |
   +--------------------+
   5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

7. Flush privileges to clear cached memory.

   mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
   
   mysql> exit
   Bye

Download and follow these steps to install WordPress on the server.

1. Open a terminal window and create a tmp directory.
2. Download the WordPress Linux zip from https://wordpress.org/download/ and unzip.

   wget <url-for-download/filename>.tar.gz

   tar xvfz <download-file-name>.tar.gz

   The command creates a wordpress directory with the PHP code for WordPress in it.

3. Copy the contents of the wordpress directory to the /var/www/html directory.

   cp -R /home/<your-username>/tmp/wordpress/* /var/www/html

   The contents of the wordpress directory are copied into the /var/www/html directory. This command is a sample. The command might differ depending on the name of your directories.

4. Change into to the /var/www/html directory.

   cd /var/www/html

5. Rename the default index.html file.

   mv index.html index.html.bk

   Now index.php is loaded by default when the root directory is accessed.

6. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file.

   mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

7. Update the values for the MySQL set up.

   vi wp-config.php

8. Run the installation script by opening a browser and this URL: http://<your-public-ip-address>/wp-admin/install.php
   Note
   
   Create an administrator account for the WordPress blog. Ensure you write down the information from the install page. You need the information to sign in to the WordPress blog.
9. Open the new blog at: http://<your-public-ip-address>

   Finish any other configuration you need for WordPress. Here is a link to help.

   • First Steps with WordPress.

You have set up a WordPress blog on an OCI compute instance.