How to Install WordPress on Ubuntu 18.04 and Configure it to Use a Remote Database

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In this tutorial we will guide you through the steps of installing WordPress on an Ubuntu 18.04 VPS with all necessary components, such as Apache web server, PHP and MySQL/MariaDB database server, and configure WordPress to use a database on a remote server.

WordPress is the most popular and most widely-used content management system (CMS). It is the CMS of choice for 26% of the entire web. It is based on PHP, and it stores its information in a MySQL database. The large amount of themes and plugins makes this CMS an excellent choice for someone that needs a user-friendly way to get their ideas onto a website that looks good. Let’s get started with the installation.

Prerequisites

  • Ubuntu 18.04 VPS + Remote database server
  • PHP version 7.3 or newer.
  • MySQL database version 5.6 or newer OR MariaDB version 10.1 or newer.
  • HTTPS support

Step 1: Log in and Update the Server

Log in to your Ubuntu 18.04 VPS via SSH as user root

ssh root@IP_Address -p Port_number

Don’t forget to replace ‘IP_Address‘ and ‘Port_number‘ with the actual IP address of your server and the SSH port number.

Once you are in, run the following commands to make sure that all installed packages on your server are updated to the latest available versions:

apt update && apt upgrade

Step 2: Install Apache Web Server

We need to install a web server to serve WordPress’ content. For this purpose, we will install and use Apache web server. It is available in the official Ubuntu repository and it can be easily installed using the apt package manager:

apt -y install apache2

Once the installation of the web server is completed, Apache should be automatically started. You can confirm this by checking its status

systemctl status apache2

Output:

apache2.service - The Apache HTTP Server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/apache2.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/apache2.service.d
           └─apache2-systemd.conf
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2019-08-09 02:31:39 CST; 14min ago
 Main PID: 406 (apache2)
    Tasks: 7 (limit: 1110)
   CGroup: /system.slice/apache2.service
           ├─  407 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─  423 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─  426 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─  427 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
           ├─  428 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Enable Apache to automatically start after a server reboot

systemctl enable apache2

Step 3: Install PHP

As we already mentioned, WordPress is a PHP-based application, so we have to install PHP and several PHP extensions on the server. Run the following command to install all necessary components:

apt -y install php php-xml php-common php-gd php-mbstring php-xmlrpc php-curl php-soap php-zip php-intl

After the installation of PHP is completed, you can check the installed version:

PHP 7.2.19-0ubuntu0.18.04.1 (cli) (built: Jun  4 2019 14:48:12) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) 1997-2018 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2018 Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.2.19-0ubuntu0.18.04.1, Copyright (c) 1999-2018, by Zend Technologies

Step 4: Install MySQL on the Remote Server

The next step is to install a database server. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will install it on a remote server.

Login to the remote server via SSH

ssh root@remote_IP -p Port_number

and install the MySQL database server using the following command

apt -y install mysql

To accept remote connections, edit the MySQL configuration file and modify the bind-address option. It is set to listen on localhost only. We will change 127.0.0.1 to the database server IP address.

/etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf

# Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on
# localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure.
bind-address            = remote_IP

and restart MySQL for the changes to take effect:

systemctl restart mysql

Step 5: Create MySQL Database and User

While you are still logged in to the remote server which we will use as our database server, create a MySQL user and database for the WordPress installation. Login to the MySQL cli as the root user and execute the following commands:

mysql -u root -p

mysql> CREATE DATABASE wp;
mysql> CREATE USER 'wpser'@'IP_address' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wp.* TO 'wpser'@'IP_address';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Where ‘IP_address‘ is the IP address of the Ubuntu 18.04 server where WordPress will be installed. Make sure to replace the password with a good and unique one.

Step 6: Install WordPress

Now, go back to the Ubuntu 18.04 VPS where we installed Apache and PHP, and install WordPress on it. To do that, download the WordPress archive:

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

Unpack the downloaded ZIP archive to the document root directory:

unzip latest.zip /var/www/html

Set the proper ownership to the WordPress files:

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

Rename the wp-config-sample.php WordPress configuration file to wp-config.php:

mv /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config.php

Edit the WordPress configuration file and modify the following lines

nano /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config.php

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wp');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'wpuser');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'PASSWORD');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'remote_IP');

and save the file.

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Step 7: Create an Apache Virtual Host

In order to be able to access WordPress with a domain name instead of the IP address, we have to create Apache virtual host for the specific domain. We will use as an example. Replace all occurences of domain.com with your actual domain name.

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin admin@domain.com
ServerName domain.com
ServerAlias www.domain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wordpress

<Directory /var/www/html/wordpress>
     Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
     AllowOverride All
     Require all granted
</Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/domain.com_error.log 
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/domain.com_access.log combined 
</VirtualHost>

Enable the virtual host

a2ensite domain.com

And restart Apache for the changes to take effect

systemctl restart apache2

With this step the WordPress installation is completed, and you can finish its configuration by opening http://domain.com in your favorite web browser. Then follow the on-screen instructions to select a language, create your administrative account, etc…

Congratulations! We have not only installed WordPress on our Ubuntu 18.04 VPS, but we also made it use a database server that is remote to the one hosting the WordPress instance.

Of course, you don’t have to install WordPress on Ubuntu 18.04 and configure it to use a Remote Database if you use one of our Optimized WordPress Hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert system administrators to install WordPress on Ubuntu 18.04 and configure it to use a Remote Database for you, using the LAMP stack or any other web hosting stack of your choice. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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