[ see also: Install guide for installing LAMP stack ]

[ jump to the WordPress Installation instructions ]

Prepare Your System

Welcome to your complete step-by-step guide to install NGINX, PHP, and MySQL on Linux (aka. the LEMP stack). This tutorial assumes you’re going to use a Debian based Linux system, whether it’s a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) installation, or an actual Linux Distribution running outside of Windows. Common Linux distros based on Debian (at least which use the apt package manager for .deb packages) are Ubuntu, Mint, MX Linux, Kali, and many many others. Technically, you can’t install NGINX on Windows, but with WSL you can!

I like the terminal-based text editor, Micro. so I’ve included it in the preliminary installation steps. I’ve also included cURL (a command line utility for accessing information from a variety of URL’s / protocols. CURL tutorial here: find it with [CTRL+F > "cURL"] ). Most likely, cURL is already installed on your system. As if you elected me to sign a Bill in Congress, I threw in net-tools as well because I like the ifconfig command. It’s no longer installed by default, and I often forget. Now I won’t!

As always, before making changes to your system’s software, start by updating your package lists:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -f
sudo apt install micro
sudo apt install curl
sudo apt install net-tools

Line-by-line above :: All-One-Line below

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -f && sudo apt install -y micro curl net-tools --install-recommends -f

Install the “M” of LEMP: the WWW / HTTP Server-side RDBMS = Free MySQL / MariaDB

sudo apt install mariadb-client mariadb-server mariadb-common dbconfig-common | tee ~/LXMP_install_mysql.txt
sudo service mariadb start
sudo mysql -u root

Line-by-line above :: All-One-Line below

sudo apt install -y mariadb-client mariadb-server mariadb-common dbconfig-common | tee ~/LXMP_install_mysql.txt \ && sudo service mariadb start  \ && sudo mysql -u root

MySQL Root Password

Verify MySQL / MariaDB is installed and functioning: Set MySQL root Password

Based on the previous command above, as advised during the MySQL / MariaDB install, that command was: sudo mysql -u root where the rdbms is executed using the -u root command, it will launch the db admin on command line, without the need to enter a password [because this is] upon very first launch as system admin on a new install such as this guide is intended.

If everything worked correctly, your shell prompt will change to the MySQL prompt, like so:

MySQL > 

The commands shown next will create the create the root user, grant privileges, and set the root password. If you do not plan to use apt and dbconfig to install phpMyAdmin, you can execute the SQL commands now while the MySQL/ MariaDB prompt is active. After executing the SQL then exiting from the database prompt, you’ll continue on the BASH command line and complete the LEMP stack / NGINX PHP MySQL HTTP web server installation by configuring a few things for your new NGINX and PHP installation.

If you followed the steps above to install mysql/ mariadb, you should now be at the command line prompt:

MySQL>

SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('*M*y*P*a*s*s*');

In addition to setting the password for the ROOT user, it’s recommended to create a secondary user and assign a password for it. Maybe you have a username that you typically use for development purposes (e.g. a user you tend to place in your wp-config.php file during development to connect to your db server). Create the second MySQL/ MariaDB user with the following command:

GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'USER02'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY '*U*S*R*2*pw*';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;

Remember: when issuing commands for MySQL User admin where the server name is required (e.g. as above, user is identified by 'root'@'localhost'), if you suspect you’ll need to admin something other than ‘localhost’, but you’re not sure and wish to try being universal, you might instead use 'root'@'%' where % is a wildcard meant to match any server name.

Install NGINX and PHP

Install NGINX and PHP (including a few PHP extension libraries which may be supported by your WordPress version). All of that can be done by executing the following one-line entry from the BASH command line. Take note of the PHP version numbers scrolling up your screen during installation (e.g. 7.4, 8.2, 8.3). You’ll need that number in a moment, after the following command completes for you:

sudo apt install -y nginx php-fpm php-curl php-imagick php-zip php-xml php-mysqli php-pdo php-gd php-mbstring php-xdebug php | tee ~/LXMP_install_nginx-php.txt && php -v | tee -a ~/LXMP_install_nginx-php.txt 

Configure new NGINX server_name

Go to NGINX config folder and enable sites:

NGINX stores site-specific configuration files, similar to the way Apache uses separate files for VHOST configurations. The folder names are even the same (e.g. sites-available; sites-enabled). Here, we use a shortcut to save 2 seconds on typing (the asterisk) the path to “/etc/nginx/sites-available“.

cd /etc/nginx/sites-av*
ls -laX

user@system:/etc/nginx/sites-available$ ls -laX
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2412 May 16 15:35 default
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 16 15:24 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 May 16 15:24 ..

Open the NGINX default site file in your text editor. Note that it has a section at the bottom which is commented out. Basically you need to duplicate this file to a new my-site-details file and edit to suit your system folder structure:

sudo micro default

# Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
        server_name _;
        location / {
                # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
        # pass PHP scripts to FastCGI server
        #
        #location ~ .php$ {
        #       include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        #
        #       # With php-fpm (or other unix sockets):
        #       fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
        #       # With php-cgi (or other tcp sockets):
        #       fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        #}
        # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
        # concurs with nginx's one
        #
        #location ~ /.ht {
        #       deny all;
        #}
}
# Virtual Host configuration for example.com
#
# You can move that to a different file under sites-available/ and symlink that
# to sites-enabled/ to enable it.
#
#server {
#       listen 80;
#       listen [::]:80;
#
#       server_name example.com;
#
#       root /var/www/example.com;
#       index index.html;
#
#       location / {
#               try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
#       }
#}

While the following is essentially a matter of removing the comments from the top part of the ./sites-available/default file, we recommend you invest some time to develop an understanding of the structure of this file. Hint: the location paths are relative to the path designated in this example at the line “root /var/www/html;”, and the lines with “location ~” tell NGINX how to handle paths containing matches to the expression which precedes the opening brace. In my case, I might summarize in Plain English that the syntax “location ~ .(php|phtml)$ /” means “anything may precede \.php OR \.phtml“, and just like most regular expressions, the “$” represents the end of allowed characters for that line. If there is a match to \.php or \.phtml, allow the connection and continue passing the file to the PHP-FPM.

The following site configuration file is copied directly from the Debian distro installed on my Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL):

server {

        listen 80;
        
        server_name mx23ahs;
        
        root /var/www/html;
        
        index index.php index.phtml index.html index.htm;
        
        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }
        
        location ~ .(php|phtml)$ {
             fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.2-fpm.sock;
             include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        }
	  	
        # HANDLE APACHE .htaccess FILES etc
        location ~ /.ht {
                deny all;
        }

		# UNCOMMENT TO ALLOW LARGE UPLOADS SUCH AS WORDPRESS .SQL INTO PHPMYADMIN
		# client_max_body_size 100M;    

		# UNCOMMENT TO AUTO INDEX CONTAINERS MISSING INDEX FILES LIKE index.html index.php etc
		# autoindex on;
		# autoindex_exact_size off;
		# autoindex_format html;
		# autoindex_localtime on;        
}

Ensure the line with php/php8.2-fpm.sock corresponds to your correct installed PHP version. Above it shows php 8.2, but you might have installed a different version. The line you need to look for starts with fastcgi_pass . If you’re uncertain about your installed php version, just go to your terminal and type:

php -v

I saved my edited file name thinking about “WSL Debian”, so “wsldebian” for the name of the NGINX configuration file works for me. Yours will likely be different.

user@system:/etc/nginx/sites-available$ ls -laX
total 16
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1296 May 16 16:33 default
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  348 May 16 16:33 wsldebian
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 16 15:39 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 May 16 15:24 ..

Use the dot-dot-slash + wildcard syntax to quickly switch the current working directory from ./sites-available to ./sites-enabled:

cd ../sites-en*

user@system:/etc/nginx/sites-enabled$ ls -laX
total 8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 May 16 15:24 default -> /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 16 16:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 May 16 15:24 ..

Note the symbolic link which exists as part of the default NGINX configuration. Now we create a new symbolic link to point to our new custom file. The “create symbolic link” syntax looks like this: ln -s source_file symbolic_link. So, in my case, I include the full file path to the ./sites-available folder where the actual file exists as the first argument. Then second argument (the link name) doesn’t need the folder paths because it’s just the name of the link itself and I want the new symbolic link to be in the ./sites-enabled folder so NGINX automatically recognizes it as a VHOST i want to enable, like so:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/wsldebian wsldebian

Important: Don’t copy/ paste and execute the symbolic link code above, unless you plan to name your server configuration file the same as mine (i.e. wsldebian). You need to use whatever filename you created in the previous step, otherwise the ln -s command will fail or link to a nonexistent file.

If you followed the guide correctly so far, the ./sites-enabled directory listing should now show the complete link to the nginx server conf file you just created. The new link should look just like the “default” link which should exist from the NGINX installation:

user@system:/etc/nginx/sites-enabled$ ls -laX
total 8
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 May 16 15:24 default -> /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 May 16 16:45 wsldebian -> /etc/nginx/sites-available/wsldebian
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 16 16:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 May 16 15:24 ..

One more stop for the NGINX virtual host configuration files. Let’s do away with the reference to the “default” site. Since it’s in the sites-enabled folder by way of a symlink (symbolic link), we’ll just break that link.

sudo unlink default

Unlike Apache, NGINX simply scans the ./sites-enabled folder for server configuration files in the ./sites-enabled folder , so you don’t have run a command (e.g. like a2ensite) as in Apache. Just restart NGINX and the new site should be enabled.

You may have to add some lines to the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file for file upload size, auto index, file extension information, etc. but this should get you started.

Install phpMyAdmin (optional)

sudo apt install phpmyadmin -f | tee ~/LXMP_install_phpmyadmin.txt
# 
# i prompted to choose between Apache or lighttpd, ignore and choose neither (hit next).
# When prompted for a phpmyadmin password, hit [enter] to let the system choose it randomly with dbconfig which you installed with MariaDB above

Important: Here we are asking the terminal to request a password as part of the command to execute mysql (or mariadb) itself. A root password has not yet been set. This approach sets the password for root (as was passed by mysql -u root) with whatever I entered at the prompt. Even though the password has been set to what was entered on the command line, let’s go ahead and use the mysql command to specify the password for posterity.

mysql -u root -p
# if MySQL / MariaDB prompt appears then you know you have successfully set the password. 
# now enter the following at the MySQL prompt while logged in as root:
MySQL [(MariaDB)]> SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('*M*y*P*a*s*s*');
MySQL [(MariaDB)]> GRANT ALL ON *.* TO '_your_new_user_'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY '*U*s*e*r*-*P*a*s*s';
MySQL [(MariaDB)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MySQL [(MariaDB)]> exit

The MySQL/ MariaDB commands above set the password for the MySQL root user and creates a user “your_new_user” and sets the password for that user with the “IDENTIFIED BY” syntax. You should be familiar with these basic MySQL terminal commands.

sudo service mariadb stop
mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &
mysql -u root
use mysql;
update user set password=PASSWORD("*YOUR*DESIRED*ROOT*PASSWORD*") where User='root';
flush privileges;
exit
service mariadb restart

sudo apt purge mysql-common

Configure PHP-FPM

NGINX Won’t Serve PHP Files

If you made it this far, and have tried viewing files on your new NGINX localhost server only to be met with a 502 Error, Bad Gateway, 404, 403 or other HTTP error, you might need to do a little bit of research.

Regardless of your success at this point, you really should read the official NGINX documentation about the “PHP FastCGI” configuration. If you’re having problems, you definitely need to read it!

If you’re having any issues with serving specific file types such as .phtml or other less popular PHP framework based file extension, you’ll need to locate the php fpm configuration specific file, /etc/php/[version.number]/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
(e.g. /etc/php/8.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf | | /etc/php/7.4/fpm/pool.d/www.conf)

sudo micro /etc/php/8.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

Where you might need to uncomment or modify the following line of the www.conf file:

security.limit_extensions = .php .phtml .phar .html .htm

Reference the NGINX bible.

Still having difficulty viewing pages under your new NGINX server? This off-site link might provide useful insight as well if you continue to encounter “Access Denied” errors related to NGINX and PHP-FPM. The example provided there, based on an Apache reference might help you o examine the syntax used in the configuration files more closely.

Finally, have a look in the Notes section here for more details including a link to an .htaccess to NGINX conversion tool. Gain some insight there for how you might wish to modify your ./sites-available files to best suit your needs. I haven’t investigated it personally, but you might what to check out Winginx.

Install WordPress with NGINX (Debian/ Ubuntu)

We are ready to do this! Now, “Go on! Get!”

One of the great things about Linux is the ability to do just about anything from the BASH Command Line. In most cases, this means you can simply copy/ paste instructions (like the ones found here) onto your own command line, execute the commands, and the result should be the same as the author experienced while writing the tutorial. That said, you should be able to simply copy the following into your terminal to install WordPress.

This is the easiest and fastest way to install WordPress:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/html/wpcurl --verbose
sudo chown www-data: /var/www/html/wpcurl --verbose
sudo chmod 755 -R /var/www/html/wpcurl --verbose
cd /var/www/html/wpcurl
curl https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz | sudo -u www-data tar zx -C /var/www/html/wpcurl
sudo mv ./wordpress/* . --verbose ## this line moves everything into the wpcurl directory

Note: the cURL operation is combined with a tar operation to extract the downloaded archive. In this illustrated example, the tar archive extraction creates a folder (“wordpress”, the same folder that’s inside of the archive retrieved by cURL) at “/var/www/html/wpcurl/wordpress“. The final line ( sudo mv … ) moves the files into the directory which was created in the first line. You can safely delete the ./wordpress directory. However, if you want to keep the directory structure as is after the cURL download / tar extraction operations (e.g. ./wpcurl/wordpress ), simply omit the last line which begins with sudo mv .

The only other required operation at this point is the creation of a database so WordPress knows what to work with during the famous 5-minute installation. If you recall, part of the WordPress installation requires you have a database name, and database user with the correct permissions as WP writes the info into the wp-config.php file which becomes part of your core installation under the WordPress base URL.

If you didn’t install phpMyAdmin yet still need a simple way to manage MySQL / MariaDB , try Adminer. Adminer requires no more installation than to copy a single file into the root of your HTTP server directory (.e.g /var/www/html/adminer.php).