Introduction
I have already written articles showing how to set up the Raspberry PI and how to set up a personal web server on the Raspberry PI. I was recently asked whether I could expand further and show how to install Wordpress onto the web server. To be able to follow this guide you will need to have set up your Raspberry PI and you will need to have PHP, MySQL, PHPMyAdmin and a web server such as Lighttpd or Apache installed. Follow the guide for setting up the personal web server linked above if you haven't already. |
Create the Wordpress database
The first part you can do from any other computer on the same network as the Raspberry PI. Make sure the Raspberry PI is turned on and that you can connect to it as a web server. (Follow the guide about setting up a personal web server if you are unsure how to do this).To create the Wordpress database open up a browser Window and navigate to PHPMyAdmin on the Raspberry PI. The address will be something like http://192.168.1.xxx/PHPMyAdmin. (Replace xxx with the last three digits that correspond to where your Raspberry PI is located).
Click on the databases tab at the top and where it says "create new database" add a new database with a name that relates to the purpose of your database. (For example "wordpress" or "piblog").
Set the collation sequence to the one that is most relevant for you. If in doubt choose utf8_general_ci.
Now you need to add a user that can interact with the database. Click on the "privileges" tab and click "add user".
For the username enter something like "piwordpress" and then enter your desired password into the password field and confirm that password in the re-type field.
Click "Create user" to add the user.
Click on "privileges" again and edit the user.
Now select "Check all" and save the changes. This gives your user permission to do anything on the database. (Not ideal for real world use by the way. For real world use you would restrict the access to the bare minimum required).
Connect to your Raspberry PI
First of all start up the Raspberry PI.If you are connected directly to the Raspberry PI and you have booted straight to the Raspbian desktop open up a terminal by clicking on the LXTerminal icon.
If you are connected directly to the Raspberry PI but it boots direct to the terminal you can move on to the next section.
If you are connecting via ssh then open up the application you use to ssh and connect using your username and the local IP address to the PI. My guide showing how to connect to the Raspberry PI from the Google Nexus will help with this and will also show how to VNC onto the Raspberry PI.
Download Wordpress
From within the terminal on the Raspberry PI run the following command to download Wordpress.
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.zip
Create the wordpress folders
Move the zip file to the /var/www folder by typing the following:sudo mv latest.zip /var/www/latest.zip
Navigate to the /var/www folder:
cd /var/www
Now unzip the latest.zip file:
sudo unzip latest.zip
This will create a folder called wordpress under /var/www and will contain all the sub folders and files for running Wordpress.
You can now remove the latest.zip file:
sudo rm latest.zip
To gain the appropriate permissions to the wordpress folder you need to change the permissions of the folder as follows:
sudo chown -R pi:users wordpress
Navigate to the wordpress folder by typing the following:cd wordpress
You now need to create a configuration file. The easiest way to do this is to take a copy of the sample Wordpress config file.
sudo cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php
Open the file wp-config in the nano editor:
sudo nano wp-config.php
You need to change various parts of the config file as follows:
- DB_Name - change to the name of the database you created
- DB_User - change to the name of the user you created
- DB_Password - change to the password you created for the user
Visit https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/
A list of keys will be generated for you and you can copy and paste the keys into the file replacing the keys that are already there.
Press CTRL and O and then CTRL and X to save and exit the file.
Install Wordpress
Open a browser and navigate to http://192.168.1.xxx/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php. (replacing xxx with the appropriate value).
Enter a title for your site and then add a username and password for your site. (This can and should be different to your database username and password).
Finally enter and email address and click "Install WordPress".
After the installation is complete you will see the screen above. Enter your username and password to access the Wordpress control panel.
Summary
That is pretty much it. You can add templates and plug ins and do everything you normally would within Wordpress.If you want to see how your site looks simply open a new browser window and navigate to http://192.168.1.xxx/wordpress
Important:
This guide has been written as a proof of concept and because I was asked if I could write a guide for this.
I wouldn't recommend using this guide to set up your Raspberry PI as a production Wordpress server. Whilst the basics are correct, the setup of the database and the database user is lacking on the security front.
If you are a developer who creates Wordpress plugins and templates, you can now use your Raspberry PI to test out your creations.
I hope you find this guide useful and if you have any questions or the guide doesn't quite work for you let me know in the comments below and I will edit this article accordingly.
Thankyou for reading.
0 comments:
Post a Comment