Step by Step to Install WordPress on Debian 11

I haven’t written an article about Debian 11 tutorial on this blog. Today, we are going to learn how to install WordPress on Debian 11. I have just created a new Linode server and I want to use it for my new blog. I prefer to manage and install all the installations by myself. If you want to start your own blog without any complicated limitations from the web hosting provider, I would recommend you to build your own web server and then install WordPress on it. Debian 11 is a great choice for the server OS. It is stable and powerful.

Steps to install WordPress on Debian 11

This would be a long article because I will try to explain every step that I took to build my WordPress-powered website on Debian 11. I assume you already had a server in the cloud with Debian 11 installed on it. Please check out the Linode website to find the low price cloud server you can run in a matter of seconds. In this article, we will learn the following:

1. Install LAMP Server
2. Install WordPress
3. Configure HTTPS for WordPress

Step 1. Install LAMP Server on Debian 11

Install Apache Web Server

Before we do the installation, it is recommended to update our system. Log in to the cloud server via SSH and then use this update command

apt update && apt upgrade

Next, we are going to install Apache Web Server on Debian 11 server

apt install apache2

Now start the webserver and enable it during system boot

systemctl start apache2
systemctl enable apache2

You can check if the Apache webserver is up and running by visiting the IP address of the cloud server using your web browser. Simply type the IP address of the server on a web browser. You should see something like this if the Apache webserver is up and running.

Install PHP 8

In this article, we will install PHP 8. But unfortunately, PHP 8 is not available through default Debian 11 repository. But don’t worry, we will sort this out.

Install file dependencies

apt-get install gnupg2 ca-certificates apt-transport-https software-properties-common -y

Add PHP repository

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

Install PHP 8.0 and some modules

apt update
apt-get install php libapache2-mod-php php-pear php-cgi php-common php-mbstring php-zip php-net-socket php-gd php-mysql php-bcmath unzip wget git -y

Now check the PHP version with this command

php -v

You should see something like this

PHP 8.1.4 (cli) (built: Mar 20 2022 16:52:39) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.1.4, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v8.1.4, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

Install MariaDB Database Server

Now let’s install the database server. We will use the MariaDB, a fork of MySQL Database server.

apt-get install mariadb-server mariadb-client -y

Now start and enable MariaDB

systemctl start mariadb
systemctl enable mariadb

Now let’s secure MariaDB installation with this command.

mysql_secure_installation

You will need to answer some questions and create a new MariaDB root password

Switch to unix_socket authentication [Y/n] n
Change the root password? [Y/n] y
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] n
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

At this point, we have successfully installed MariaDB database server.

Create WordPress Database

We need to create a new database to store WordPress data.

mysql -u root -p

Now create a new database called wordpress

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

Now grant the privileges to the wordpressuser

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO wordpressuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'YourPassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUIT;

Step 2. Install WordPress

In the following steps, we are going to download and install WordPress. First, cd to the correct directory

cd /var/www/html

Now download the latest version of WordPress

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

Now extract the zip package

unzip latest.zip

Now rename the wordpress folder created from the command above. Please change v-tech.id with your actual domain name.

mv wordpress v-tech.id

Now navigate to yourdomain.com and then copy the sample config

cd v-tech.id
cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Now let’s edit the wp-config.php and change the database settings based on our database we created earlier.

nano wp-config.php

Now type the correct database, user as well as database password here.

define( 'DB_NAME', 'wordpress' );
define( 'DB_USER', 'wordpressuser' );
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'YourPassword' );
define( 'DB_HOST', 'localhost' );

Done. Now close the editor using CTRL + X combination.

Now change the ownership of the v-tech.id folder to www-data

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/v-tech.id

Create Apache VirtualHost for WordPress

Now let’s create a new VirtualHost for our WordPress site.

nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/v-tech.id.conf

Now add the following lines

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin user@yourdomain.com
        ServerName v-tech.id
        DocumentRoot /var/www/html/v-tech.id

        <Directory "/var/www/html/v-tech.id">
             AllowOverride All
        </Directory>

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/yourdomain.error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/yourdomain.access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Now execute these three commands

a2ensite yourdomain
a2enmod rewrite
systemctl restart apache2

Enable HTTPS for WordPress

It is very important to enable the HTTPS for our WordPress site. We are going to install Let’s Encrypt for our WordPress site.

apt-get install certbot python3-certbot-apache -y

Now use this command

certbot --apache --agree-tos --redirect --hsts --uir --staple-ocsp --email user@yourdomain.com -d v-tech.id,www.v-tech.id

Make sure there is no error during the verification process.

Install WordPress via Web Interface.

Now let’s access our WordPress site. We are going to perform the installation. Type the IP address or the domain name. You should see the following page.

Choose the installation language

Click Install WordPress and wait until the installation process completes. Now enjoy WordPress. To access the admin page, use the following address:

https://yourdomain.com/wp-admin

Thanks for reading this article to install WordPress on Debian 11 server. Please drop me a comment if you need more information about this. Cheers.