Cyde Weys Musings

Hey everyone. I just got WordPress up and running on my Ubuntu Linux system, and so I thought my first blog post might as well be a walkthrough on how I got it working. I’m writing this because I couldn’t find a similar walkthrough anywhere else online. Let’s begin!

[Update 2007-08-21: This works under Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn as well.]

You should already have Apache, MySQL, and PHP installed (a typical LAMP setup). If you don’t have those installed yet, there are plenty of tutorials out there that will help you install them. Note that this walkthrough will probably also work for recent versions of Debian Linux (the distro that Ubuntu is based on).

The first thing to do is to install the wordpress package using apt-get.

apt-get install wordpress

If you get an error message that the package wordpress cannot be found, it is most likely because you do not have multiverse servers enabled for apt-get. Here’s how to add them. First, edit /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following two lines (it doesn’t particularly matter where you add them, or even if you have duplicate lines).

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted universe multiverse

Now tell apt-get to update its package list and you should be able to find wordpress.

sudo apt-get update

Okay, WordPress is now installed. Next we have to configure Apache to tell it about WordPress.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

At the bottom of the file add the following lines:

Alias /blog /usr/share/wordpress
<Directory /usr/share/wordpress>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride Limit Options FileInfo
DirectoryIndex index.php
</Directory>

This will install WordPress to http://yourdomain.com/blog/. If you want it to go somewhere else, just adjust the path accordingly.

Now we have to tell Apache to reload its configuration files.

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Next, we are going to create a database in MySQL for WordPress to use. First, login to MySQL.

mysql -u root -p

If you have never used MySQL before, the default root password is blank. Now would be a good time to set one.

Next we are going to create a database for WordPress to use. I’m going to be very imaginative and name the database “wordpress”.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Now we have to create a database user for wordpress. This part is important; you could just use the same user for all of your applications, but if something went wrong, you could lose all of your data. By creating a separate MySQL user for each application, you are limiting your damage. I’m going to be imaginative again and choose the name “wordpress_user” for the WordPress database user account. You might want to pick a better password than fluffy; that’s simply what I’m using for this demonstration.

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'wordpress_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'fluffy' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Now let’s make sure that these changes took:

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

We are done with MySQL now, so let’s quit.

mysql> quit;
Bye

Next we are going to modify WordPress’s configuration file to tell it about the database and user we just created for it. But first, we have to deal with a little idiosyncrasy. The Ubuntu WordPress package creates a symbolic link to /etc/wordpress/ for its configuration file, but we aren’t going to be using anything in /etc/ for our installation. So first, get rid of the symbolic link. Don’t worry, this is just deleting a link, it’s not actually deleting any files. The default wp-config.php will remain in /etc/wordpress/ if you really want it.

sudo rm /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php

Now copy the sample configuration over to the main configuration location.

sudo cp /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php

Now let’s edit the configuration.

sudo nano /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php

Remember the database name, user account, and password that we just set in MySQL? We are going to input these into the configuration file and save it.

define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress'); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', 'wordpress_user'); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'fluffy'); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value

We’re almost done. Now we just use WordPress’s built-in installation script. Go to http://yourdomain.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php and follow the directions. Write down the auto-generated password it gives you.

Now we’re going to login to WordPress. Go to http://yourdomain.com/blog/wp-login.php and login with the account ‘admin’ and the password you just wrote down. Now everything is working! The first thing you should do is change the password to the admin account. This option can be accessed from the “Users” tab along the top of the screen.

We have one more thing to do. We’re going to install a plugin for WordPress called “Spam Karma”. This plugin will defend your site from comment spam, which is a much bigger problem than you’d realize, especially if your site starts getting really popular. Luckily, it’s very easy to install the plugin. Go to the plugins directory, download the plugin using wget, and unzip it.

cd /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/
sudo wget http://wp-plugins.net/sk2/sk2_final.zip
sudo unzip sk2_final.zip

Now, go back into the admin console of your blog, go to the Plugins tab, and click on the Activate button next to Spam Karma.

That’s it; you’re done! Try writing your first post on WordPress, or configure your site’s look and feel.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 18:57 and is filed under GNU/Linux, Tech. Keywords: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.