How To Host A Wordpress Site From Your Computer

This tutorial diverges significantly from Professor Kevin Lu's "lesson4" exercise on his iot GitHub repo

Installation

Apache2

Up first was setting up apache2 so that I had a foundation to build the Wordpress site on. Apache allows you to host a server on your computer and actually comes pre-installed on some MacBook models

sudo apt install apache2

Next, I restarted the apache service so that it was able to make sure it was up and running properly - this will also make the service run at startup

sudo systemctl stop apache2.service

sudo systemctl start apache2.service

sudo systemctl enable apache2.service

You can check the status of the apache service (or really any service in general) by running the following command and replacing "apache2.service" with your desired service name

sudo systemctl status apache2.service

Note: pressing "q" will close the menu opened

MariaDB

Next was installing Mariadb and configuring the mysql installation

sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client

sudo systemctl stop mysql.service

sudo systemctl start mysql.service

sudo systemctl enable mysql.service

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Set the root password to what you desire and pass through the wizard

Next, restart the service so changes can take effect

sudo systemctl restart mysql.service

php

To install php, the following commands must be run

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

sudo apt update

sudo apt install php7.1 libapache2-mod-php7.1 php7.1-common php7.1-mbstring php7.1-xmlrpc php7.1-soap php7.1-gd php7.1-xml php7.1-intl php7.1-mysql php7.1-cli php7.1-mcrypt php7.1-zip php7.1-curl

Now that all of the required packages are installed, make some quick changes to these settings in your apache2 php.ini file

sudo vim /etc/php/7.1/apache2/php.ini

Change these settings:

file_uploads = On

allow_url_fopen = On

memory_limit = 256M

upload_max_filesize = 100M

max_execution_time = 360

date.timezone = America/Chicago

Wordpress Database

The following will create the database required for your Wordpress site to function

sudo mysql -u root -p

create database wordpress;

create user 'wordpressuser'@'localhost' identified by 'password';

grant all on wordpress.* to 'wordpressuser'@'localhost' identified by 'password' with grant option;

flush privileges;

exit;

Wordpress

First, install the latest release of wordpress onto your computer, I placed the compressed version in my tmp folder

cd /tmp

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

tar -zxvf latest.tar.gz

sudo mv wordpress /var/www/html/wordpress

Now, these commands will set ownership of the wordpress folders to user www-data and set group to www-data along with changing their chmod permissions to make them read, write, execute by its owner, read, execute by its group, and read, execute by everyone else

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

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/wordpress/

Next, you have to configure apache to run wordpress so run this command to make the document wordpress.conf and paste what comes afterwards into the document

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

<VirtualHost *:80>

     ServerAdmin admin@example.com

     DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wordpress/

     ServerName example.com

     ServerAlias www.example.com

     <Directory /var/www/html/wordpress/>

        Options +FollowSymlinks

        AllowOverride All

        Require all granted

     </Directory>

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Save and exit

Now enable wordpress and rewrite, then restart apache

sudo a2ensite wordpress

sudo a2enmod rewrite

sudo a2dismod php7.0

sudo a2enmod php7.1

sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

Now it's finally time to configure wordpress!

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

sudo vim /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-config.php

Change the following settings and save

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //

/** The name of the database for WordPress */

define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');

/** MySQL database username */

define('DB_USER', 'wordpressuser');

/** MySQL database password */

define('DB_PASSWORD', 'user_password_here');

/** MySQL hostname */

define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */

define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Final Steps

Now that that's all taken care of, its time to finish this setup off with your browser.

In a chromium based browser (Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc..., I've only tested this on firefox) type the following unto the URL bar:

http://127.0.0.1/wordpress/wp-config.php

After that, a wordpress setup page should appear asking for your preferred language

Create an account and continue with the setup wizard, you should be all done!

By the end, your site should look something like this:

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