How to Install WordPress on CentOS 8

WordPress is a popular tool used to build websites and features to help you publish anything, anywhere. It is also a open source software you can use to create a beautiful website, blog, or app.

Prerequisites

In order to publish your WordPress site on the web, you will need a Web server setup on the system and running.

For detailed installation, refer to LAMP Stack on CentOS 8.

Update Firewall rules

Allow the firewall to accept HTTP and HTTPS connection and reload it with following commands.

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https

firewall-cmd --reload

Output:

[root@my ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=http
success
[root@my ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=https
success
[root@my ~]# firewall-cmd --reload
success
[root@my ~]#

Start and Enable Apache and MariaDB services

Start and enable both the Apache webserver and the MariaDB services to start after system reboot.

systemctl start mariadb

systemctl start httpd

systemctl enable mariadb

systemctl enable httpd

Secure MariaDB Installation

Next, we secure our MariaDB installation and setup a root password for MariaDB.

mysql_secure_installation

Output:

[root@my ~]# mysql_secure_installation
NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MariaDB
      SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE!  PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!
Enter current password for root (enter for none):
OK, successfully used password, moving on...

Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MariaDB
root user without the proper authorisation.

Set root password? [Y/n] y
New password:
Re-enter new password:

Creating a new DataBase

Log into MySQL with the following command,

mysql -u root -p

First, we'll create a new database,

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

Next, create a new MySQL user account that we will use to operate on WordPress's new database, with username "admin"

CREATE USER `admin`@`localhost` IDENTIFIED BY 'pass';

Link the user and DB together by granting our user access to the database,

GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO `admin`@`localhost`;

Flush the privileges so that MySQL knows about the user permissions we just added,

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Exit out of the MySQL command prompt by typing,

exit

Output:

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.000 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE USER `admin`@`localhost` IDENTIFIED BY 'pass';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.000 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO `admin`@`localhost`;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.000 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.000 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]>

Install Additional Packages

WordPress will require certain packages to support the install, such as php-mysqlnd php-fpm tar curl php-json.

These can be installed with the below command,

yum install php-mysqlnd php-fpm tar curl php-json

Download and extract WordPress

Download the wordpress by using curl command and extract the downloaded file,

curl https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz --output wordpress.tar.gz

tar xf wordpress.tar.gz

Moving to Web root directory

Copy the extracted WordPress directory into the /var/www/html directory,

cp -r wordpress /var/www/html

File Permissions and SELinux

Change ownership of the directory to apache and update permissions for file SELinux security context,

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

chcon -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t /var/www/html/wordpress -R

Navigate to your browser

http://server_IP/wordpress

Start WordPress installation by clicking on the Run the installation button:

Provide the requested information:

Once the wordpress is installed login with your new user credentials: