How To Install WordPress on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install WordPress on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, WordPress is an open-source CMS (Content Management System) that allows you to create a website that is tailored to your specific requirements. With WordPress, you can create a blog, a company website, a portfolio, an online store, or anything else you can think of.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of WordPress cms on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 11 (Bullseye).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install WordPress on Debian 11 Bullseye

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing the LAMP stack.

A Debian 11 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, Please read our previous tutorial to install LAMP Server on Debian 11.

Step 3. Installing WordPress on Debian 11.

Now we download the latest stable version of WordPress from the official page:

cd /tmp
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Next, extract the downloaded file, use the below command:

tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz
sudo mv wordpress/ /var/www/html/

We will need to change some folder permissions:

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

Step 4. Configuring MariaDB.

By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. You should read and below each step carefully which will set the root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MariaDB:

mysql_secure_installation

Configure it like this:

- Set root password? [Y/n] y
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Next, we will need to log in to the MariaDB console and create a database for WordPress. Run the following command:

mysql -u root -p

This will prompt you for a password, so enter your MariaDB root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in to your database server, you need to create a database for WordPress installation:

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE wordpress_db;
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER 'wordpress_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password';
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress_db.* to wordpress_user@'localhost';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> exit

Step 5. Configure WordPress.

In this step we will configure the main configuration file of WordPress, where we need to configure its basic parameters so that it can be connected with the database and users:

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

Now open it using any of your favorite editors, to make any changes in the WordPress configuration file:

nano wp-config.php

Here are the values that we need to update according to our previous database and user’s setup:

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress_db');

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

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'your-strong-password');

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

Step 6. Configuring Apache.

Now we create a new VirtualHost to better manage the WordPress website:

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

Add the following file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin admin@your_domain.com
      DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wordpress
     ServerName your-domain.com

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

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_error.log
     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Save and close, then restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/wordpress.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/wordpress.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 7. Installing the Let’s Encrypt certificates.

First, install Certbot to your Debian system using the following command below:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache

Then, generate the certificates, with the following command:

sudo certbot --apache -d [your-domain.com]

You will then be prompted to enter an email address for the certificate. After you have entered that you must agree to the T&C’s and decide if you want to share your email address with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This last step is optional. Once successfully, Reload Apache again to load all the new configurations.

Step 8. Accessing the WordPress Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, open a web browser and go to https://your-domain.com and you will see the following screen starting the installer.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed WordPress. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of WordPress on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official WordPress website.