I will present here an ultimate guide allowing you to have WordPress installed and functional on Raspberry Pi from scratch
Is it possible to correctly run WordPress on a Raspberry Pi?
Yes, it is possible to install and use WordPress on a Raspberry Pi, after installing a LAMP server on it, i.e.: Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP
I’m going to assume that your Raspberry Pi is empty, or that you want to reinstall one just for WordPress
So you have here all the necessary information from scratch
If this is not the case, and there are already steps you have completed, I let you use the summary below to start where you left off.
Step 1 – Install Raspbian
Download Raspbian
First of all, you will have to download the latest version of Raspbian from the official website
If you only want to install WordPress, the lite version may be enough, you have to do it without the GUI, but it should not be too complicated
Download the image and continue
Flash an SD Card with Raspbian
I then recommend using Etcher
If you have not installed it yet, get it from the official website
It’s a tool that allows you to flash an SD card very easily on Linux, Mac, or Windows
- Start Etcher
- Select the location of the Raspbian image
- Choose your SD card
- Click on Flash
Once the SD card is ready, eject it and insert in your Raspberry Pi
First Boot
The installation is automatic, you just have to start your Raspberry Pi, and Raspbian will launch
GUI
If you chose the Desktop version, a welcome menu will open:
- Choose your language preferences
- Change the default password
- Connect to the wifi if necessary
- Accept system updates
- Reboot the Raspberry Pi
If everything worked fine, move on
Otherwise, it will be required at least to succeed to connect the network and to change the password (the following paragraph can help you)
Lite
If you chose the lite version, you would have to do the same thing but by hand
- Login
- Default login: pi
- Default password: raspberry
- Change the password
passwd
- Use raspi-config to configure network and change language preferences if needed (nothing to do if Ethernet with DHCP)
sudo raspi-config
- Once connected to the Internet, update your system
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
- Reboot
If everything is ok, move on
Enable SSH
SSH is a secure remote connection protocol, which allows you to launch commands from another computer on the network
Unless it’s not possible for you, I strongly recommend using SSH for the rest of this guide
It will be much simpler to copy commands, test, etc … from your usual computer
By default, the service is not started on Raspberry Pi
So we will enable SSH and connect to it before continuing
GUI
To enable SSH through the GUI, go to the applications menu, then Preferences > Raspberry Pi Configuration > Interfaces
Check Enabled for the SSH line
Terminal
You can also launch the terminal and type this command:
sudo service ssh start
Autorun at each boot
The SSH service is not started automatically when the Raspberry Pi is started
If necessary you can start it with each reboot, by typing this command:
sudo crontab -e
And adding this line:
@reboot /usr/sbin/service ssh start
Connect
You can now connect to your Raspberry Pi in SSH
If you are not familiar with SSH, I recommend you read my two articles about it before continuing:
– How to connect in SSH?
– What is the IP address of my Raspberry Pi?
Step 2 – Install web server (Apache, PHP)
Introduction
WordPress is a web application, written in PHP
We need a web server to make it available so that we will set up all the components of a LAMP server:
– L: Linux (Raspbian)
– A: Apache
– M: Mysql (MariaDB)
– P: PHP
We already have the “L” in place with our Raspbian installation, let’s go to Apache
Install Apache
Apache is the most popular web server on the internet
Its role is to provide visitors with HTML files that will then be interpreted by browsers
Install Apache with apt :
sudo apt-get install apache2
It works!
You can now navigate to the default web page by typing the IP address of the Raspberry Pi into a browser (http: //X.X.X.X)
You should see something like this :
Install PHP
PHP is a programming language, which will allow you to create dynamic web pages (e.g. display to add your name dynamically in the page)
We need to install PHP and allow Apache to use it
sudo apt-get install php
Hello world
To make sure that PHP is active, we will do the following test:
- Go to the folder /var/www/html
cd /var/www/html
- Create and edit the test.php file
-
sudo nano test.php
- Paste the following PHP code
<?php echo "Hello World!"; ?>
- Save and close
Then go to http://X.X.X.X/test.php and watch
It should be displayed only “Hello World!”
If so, everything works fine so far; you can move on as a result
Step 3 – Install database server (MariaDB)
Introduction
We are now able to create a website in HTML and PHP
But WordPress needs a little more; it requires a database to store all posts, pages, and configurations
For that, we will install MariaDB, a free fork of MySQL which exists since the acquisition of MySQL by Oracle
Installation
To install it, nothing more simple, let’s use again apt:
sudo apt-get install mariadb-server
It takes a little longer than the previous ones 🙂
Configuration
Access to the database is protected by a password, which may be different from the one of the user
By default only the root user has access without a password from his account, so we will connect to it and create a new account for WordPress
- Connect to the MySQL CLI
- Create a new user
CREATE USER 'wordpress'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
- Create a new database
CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
- Give WordPress user all privileges on the new database
GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO 'wordpress'@'localhost';
- Quit the MySQL CLI
quit
PHP MySQL package
To allow PHP to connect to MySQL, a last small package must be installed
sudo apt-get install php-mysql
Restart Apache to apply
sudo service apache2 restart
Test
Again, let’s do a quick test to make sure the connection is functional:
- Try to connect to MySQL
mysql -u wordpress -p
- Enter the user password
- Check if the user can view the new database
SHOW DATABASES;
- Quit
quit
If you see at least the WordPress database, then it’s okay, you can continue and move to the WordPress installation itself
Step 4 – Install WordPress
Download
WordPress offers its software under two versions
- A version hosted on their servers, WordPress.com
- A version to download, WordPress.org
So you have to use the second option to use it on your Raspberry Pi
Download WordPress from the official website
Copy the link (right click on it) and download it to the Raspberry Pi via SSH:
sudo wget https://wordpress.org/latest.zip -O /var/www/html/wordpress.zip
Uncompress
Move to the web folder and uncompress the file:
cd /var/www/html sudo unzip wordpress.zip
Rights
To avoid permissions problems with WordPress, and also to no longer need the sudo later, we can modify the rights on the WordPress files
sudo chmod 755 wordpress -R sudo chown www-data wordpress -R
This will give full rights to Apache, and read/execution to others
Configuration
The code of WordPress is now in place; it remains only to configure it, i.e.:
- Configure the connection to the database
- Create a login for the administration of WordPress
Access the installation wizard by pointing your browser at http://X.X.X.X/wordpress
Click Let’s Go Button
On the next screen, fill the form with the MySQL user created before
You should have something like this
Validate, and the wizard will ask you to run the installation
Click the button and wait
On the next screen you have to choose the site name, and create the administrator user
Fill in the fields with what you want, then validate
It will still take a few moments
Here we are!
The configuration is complete; you can go back to the address http://X.X.X.X/wordpress to see your WordPress website live!
The wizard offers you to go directly to the administration page; we’ll talk about it right after
A few tips
WordPress introduction
I will not go into much detail in using WordPress; this is not the goal here
But now that it is installed, I will give you 2/3 tips to get started
Admin and Front
WordPress is composed of two parts:
- Administration: accessible by adding / wp-admin to the URL, it allows you to configure your site and add content
- Front: this is the part visible to all visitors
When you are logged in, the top bar allows you to switch from one to the other easily
Appearance
WordPress comes with a basic design, but it is possible to customize your site as you wish
To get started, go to Appearance> Themes
Here you can add free themes from the list
In the Appearance menu, you can also manage the menus of your site, and the widgets
A widget is a block that can be integrated into the sidebar for example to display a search engine or an image
Plugins
A bit like Raspberry Pi, WordPress provided a scalable foundation
It is indeed possible to install plugins, to add additional features to your website or your admin
Go to Plugins > Add new to see a list of all plugins available
Pages and Posts
Once your site is personalized, it’s time to add content
For this you can create two types of content:
- Pages: These are static pages, which contain for example your homepage or a contact form
- Posts: that’s all the rest of the content, they are grouped into categories to make it easier for them to search later
You will be able to add your pages and categories to your menus, and the posts will appear automatically
Services management
Let’s go back to our services that allow you to run WordPress: Apache, PHP, and MySQL
You need to know that there are commands to start or stop them
This may be useful in case of a crash, or if you want to stop them to cut access to the site
Here are the commands:
sudo service apache2 start | stop | restart | reload sudo service mysql start | stop | restart | reload
As I said above PHP is a module of Apache, so there is no particular command to launch
If Apache is running, the PHP pages will be displayed correctly
Services configuration files
I will also tell you where to find the configuration files if you ever want to make changes
Apache : /etc/apache2
PHP : /etc/php
MySQL : /etc/mysql
In the case of a WordPress installation, you normally do not need to touch it
But maybe if this article makes you want to try other things it could be useful
PHPMyAdmin
PHPMyAdmin is a handy tool that you can use on a LAMP installation
This is a web interface that will allow you to access your MySQL databases in a more intuitive way
You will be able to view and modify the data, create users, manage rights and supervise the MySQL server.
To install it, use the following command
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin
Choose apache2 as your web server when asked
You can skip database configuration
Once the installation is complete, the interface is available at http://X.X.X.X/phpmyadmin
Log in with your wordpress account to see the WordPress database
If you want to share this newly created website on the internet, it is quite possible
You simply have to redirect a port from your internet box on the port 80 of Raspberry Pi = to be able to connect to the site by using the public IP address of your Internet connection
Public IP:PORT => Raspberry Pi IP: 80
So you can access the website with http://Y.Y.Y.Y:PORT/wordpress
Y.Y.Y.Y is your public IP, and PORT the port you choose
If you do not have a fixed IP address, you can inquire about dynamic DNS services that allow you to use a web address that will be constantly updated with your new IP address
Conclusion
So you learned to install a LAMP server on Raspberry Pi and to install WordPress to use it
You also had some tips to go further with your installation of WordPress
I was pleasantly surprised to see that WordPress works pretty well on Raspberry Pi, while it happens to be rather slow on some professional web hosting
Can be a project idea to think about …