Install WordPress 5 with Apache, MariaDB 10 and PHP 7 on CentOS 7

WordPress is an open source and free blogging application and a dynamic CMS (Content Management System) developed using MySQL and PHP. It has huge number of third party plugins and themes. WordPress currently one of the most popular blogging platform available on the internet and used by millions of people across the globe.

In this tutorial we are going to explain how to install the popular content management system – WordPress using LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP) on RHEL, CentOS and Fedora Linux distributions.

Requirements

1. A dedicated server or a VPS (Virtual Private Server) with CentOS 7 minimal installation.

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Installing Remi Repository on CentOS 7

The installation that we will perform will be on CentOS 7, but same instructions also works on RHEL and Fedora distributions as well.

First install and enable Remi repository using following command.

# yum -y install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm  [On CentOS/RHEL 7]
# dnf install http://rpms.remirepo.net/fedora/remi-release-29.rpm        [On Fedora 29]

Since we are going to use php7.3, we will need to disable the installation of php5.4 using yum-config-manager command provided by yum-utils tool.

# yum install yum-utils
# yum-config-manager --disable remi-php54
# yum-config-manager --enable remi-php73

Installing LAMP Stack on CentOS 7

Now we are ready to install all the required packages related to our LAMP stack using following command.

# yum install httpd mariadb mariadb-server php php-common php-mysql php-gd php-xml php-mbstring php-mcrypt

Now that the installation is complete, we will need to start and secure our MariaDB installation.

# systemctl start mariadb
# mysql_secure_installation

Follow the instructions on the screen to answer the questions related to your MariaDB server security.

Then we will configure MariaDB to start automatically on system boot:

# systemctl enable mariadb

Next we will do the same for Apache web server:

# systemctl start httpd
# systemctl enable httpd

Creating WordPress MySQL Database

Our WordPress will require a database and a database user. To create one, simply use the following commands. Feel free to replace the database name, user and password as per your preferences:

# mysql -u root -p
Enter password:

## Create database ##
CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

## Creating new user ##
CREATE USER [email protected] IDENTIFIED BY "secure_password";

## Grant privileges to database ##
GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO [email protected];

## FLUSH privileges ##
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

## Exit ##
exit

Preparing WordPress Installation

Now we are ready to download the latest WordPress archive:

# cd /tmp && wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

Next extract the archive in our web directory:

# tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz -C /var/www/html

The above will create the following directory, which will contain our WordPress script:

/var/www/html/wordpress

Now change the ownership of that directory to user “apache”:

# chown -R apache /var/www/html/wordpress

Creating Apache Virtual Host for WordPress

We will create a separate virtual host for our WordPress install. Open /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf with your favorite text editor:

# vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

And add the following code at the bottom of the file and replace the marked text with the information related to your installation:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin [email protected]
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wordpress
  ServerName tecminttest.com
  ServerAlias www.tecminttest.com
  ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/tecminttest-error-log
  CustomLog /var/log/httpd/tecminttest-acces-log common
</VirtualHost>

Save your changes and restart Apache:

# systemctl restart httpd

Installing WordPress on Website

Now we are ready to run our WordPress installation. To start the installation you can access either your server’s IP address at http://ip-address or if installing locally you can use http://localhost or if you are using a real domain, you can use the domain instead. You should see the following page:

When you click on Let’s Go button, you will be redirected to the next page of the installation, where you will have to enter the database details we created earlier.

When you have enter the details, click the submit button. WordPress will attempt to create it’s configuration file called wp-config.php. If everything is fine you should see the following page:

Once you click the “Run the installation” button, you will be asked to enter some details about your website: Site Title, Username, Password and Email address.

When you have filled all the required information finalize the installation by clicking the button at the bottom. Your installation is now complete. Your front page should look something the image below:

And the WordPress dashboard looks as follows:

You can now start managing your WordPress website.

Conclusion

You have successfully completed the installation of WordPress using LAMP on CentOS 7. If you had any difficulties or questions, please submit them in the comment section below.