WordPress 4.1.1 installation on Ubuntu 14.04

• Tested on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS, Apache/2.4.9, PHP 5.5.15RC1, git 2.0.2, MySQL 5.5.41-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 / easy /

There is the Famous 5-Minute Install instruction so these are just my personal notes if I have to install other instances on a similar environment.

Unpack the files

WordPress devs have decided on, what I consider as outdated, SVN, however they have been kind to put up a GitHub repo. This makes it easier to pull or merge latest updates even though the update is supposed to be much simpler.

mhan@brahms:/srv/www/blog $ git clone https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress.git .

Cloning into '.'...
remote: Counting objects: 196601, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (43/43), done.
remote: Total 196601 (delta 28), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 196558
Receiving objects: 100% (196601/196601), 116.49 MiB | 9.94 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (154751/154751), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Checking out files: 100% (1424/1424), done.<br>

Set up the database

I'm connecting to the local database.

mhan@brahms:/srv/www/blog $ mysql -uroot -p

Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 9234
Server version: 5.5.41-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> create database wp_michael;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.02 sec)

mysql> grant all on wp_michael.* to 'webacc'@'localhost' identified by 'password';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> exit
Bye

Update the wp-config.php file

We'll use the default as a starting point. Let's first make a copy of the sample config file.

mhan@brahms:/srv/www/blog $ cp -p wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

This doesn't add to the security, but I usually keep original files with an extension of .dist (short for distribution).

mhan@brahms:/srv/www/blog $ mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config-sample.php.dist

Make updates to the config file. The lines for salts can be obtained at https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/. The following diff shows you the changes I've made.

19c19
< define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');
---
> define('DB_NAME', 'wp_michael');
22c22
< define('DB_USER', 'username_here');
---
> define('DB_USER', 'webacc');
25c25
< define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');
---
> define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
45,53c45,52
< define('AUTH_KEY',         'put your unique phrase here');
< define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  'put your unique phrase here');
< define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',    'put your unique phrase here');
< define('NONCE_KEY',        'put your unique phrase here');
< define('AUTH_SALT',        'put your unique phrase here');
< define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here');
< define('LOGGED_IN_SALT',   'put your unique phrase here');
< define('NONCE_SALT',       'put your unique phrase here');
<
---
> define('AUTH_KEY',         'xSiS5fsJx&c6x-1Xd^xv8<IK|Fp2#]jjyxfH7|XRr -sRrH2O]&gS=U7jp:ikj$j');
> define('SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  ';)[9IiH)=]^ca[sYbSrSX!-8Ou?3_B7TN#47^tI#R/l8MaSnc^>|C]Yb9pJBoW/d');
> define('LOGGED_IN_KEY',    '9]&k)u#m;n#40-j4<~X*!}E`RjE]Se[nxa,D}+]b~zu`1+$*L7H4}&C]=4dr]+H8');
> define('NONCE_KEY',        'k3i|O O4 ls_lcaamI-aza)zp|/h4G-KAnOGlQD.Z1k0Pgjc!a fcOXs+B^?6Jus');
> define('AUTH_SALT',        ':SrSJn+FH2.K>udlBa+)a8|wt#l%P*#gQ{bv;{S*Sn+>-GUA~]re`BqL043j7Hlp');
> define('SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'GpRr[xCm:ECIo$z+-<S{)>W*[QnWagNyD.z|1(6)-+v{5z4GiK7}4Co03,W]Htr~');
> define('LOGGED_IN_SALT',   '_jbNqHC(GT=i|!T?+KFRL>4|S|d:-<..#@NnCb9@m e_nKZomo>W-Da&UEnr)w`j');
> define('NONCE_SALT',       'Sq+|7M++P>BFh6]-aw ja/aRlf(v0!<Q#7DIiun|)G0yJ$0&LknmTVAAY?~-tDon');
62c61
< $table_prefix  = 'wp_';
---
> $table_prefix  = '';

Set up the web services

I'm using Apache here, and this is how my config file looks like.

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName michael.blog.com
        ServerAdmin webmaster@server.com
        ServerSignature off
        DocumentRoot /srv/www/blog
        <Directory /srv/www/blog>
                Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Require all granted

                <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
                        RewriteEngine On
                        RewriteBase /
                        RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                        RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
                </IfModule>
        </Directory>

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>d