Author: Francis Ndungu
Last Updated: Tue, Jun 15, 2021WordPress is an open-source content management system that powers millions of websites, blogs, and corporate portals. The software is written in PHP and can be installed on a FAMP (FreeBSD, Apache web server, MySQL, and PHP) stack.
WordPress has a friendly dashboard and rich-text editor that doesn't require any HTML knowledge to use. It also has many professional themes and plug-ins that you can use to customize your website. In this tutorial, you'll install, configure and run a WordPress site with a FAMP stack on FreeBSD 12.
Before you begin, make sure you have the following:
A domain name such as example.com. To test this guide, you may use your server's public IP address.
SSH to your server and make sure your system packages are up to date.
$ sudo freebsd-update fetch install
$ sudo pkg update
$ sudo pkg upgrade -y
Optionally, install the nano text editor. While this guide uses nano for the examples, you're free to use any other text editor.
$ sudo pkg install -y nano
Install the PHP extensions required by WordPress.
$ sudo pkg install -y php73-xml php73-gd php73-curl php73-tokenizer php73-zlib php73-zip php73-intl php73-mbstring php73-json php73-ftp php73-ctype php73-dom php73-posix php73-filter php73-iconv php73-openssl php73-simplexml php73-sockets php73-xmlreader php73-mysqli php73-pdo_mysql php73-hash
To craft human-readable URLs, WordPress uses the mod_rewrite module. First, open the Apache configuration file using nano to enable it.
$ sudo nano /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf
Find the line below.
# LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache24/mod_rewrite.so
Uncomment the above line by removing the # symbol at the beginning to enable the mod_rewrite module.
LoadModule rewrite_module libexec/apache24/mod_rewrite.so
Save and close the file.
Restart Apache to load the new configuration.
$ sudo service apache24 restart
Log in to your MySQL server as root.
$ sudo mysql -u root -p
Enter your root password and press ENTER to proceed.
At the MySQL prompt, enter the commands below to create a wordpress database and a wp_user user. Replace EXAMPLE_PASSWORD with a strong value.
root@localhost [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
CREATE USER 'wp_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'EXAMPLE_PASSWORD';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'wp_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Exit from the MySQL command-line interface.
root@localhost [(none)]> QUIT;
Apache will serve the WordPress site from the /usr/local/www/apache24/data/ directory. Create a child wordpress directory in this location.
$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress
Change the ownership of the new directory to your username to avoid permission issues when working on the directory. Replace example with your username.
$ sudo chown -R example:example /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress
Create a new virtual host file and instruct Apache to load your WordPress site from the directory you've just created.
$ sudo nano /usr/local/etc/apache24/Includes/wordpress.conf
Enter the information below into the file. Replace example.com and webmaster@example.com with your values.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
ServerName example.com
DocumentRoot /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress
<Directory /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress>
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Save and exit the file.
Restart Apache to load the new changes.
$ sudo service apache24 restart
Navigate to the tmp directory.
$ cd /tmp
Download the latest version of WordPress.
$ curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
Unpack the WordPress tarball.
$ tar xzvf latest.tar.gz
Copy the files to the WordPress site directory that you created earlier.
$ sudo rsync -rtv /tmp/wordpress/ /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress
Navigate to the /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress directory.
$ cd /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress
Copy the sample configuration file to wp-config.php.
$ sudo cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php
Create an upgrade directory under the wp-content directory.
$ sudo mkdir wp-content/upgrade
Change the ownership of the /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress directory to the Apache user www.
$ sudo chown -R www:www /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress
Set the appropriate permissions for the WordPress files and directories.
$ sudo find /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
$ sudo find /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;
The WordPress software relies on some salts and keys for security purposes. Grab some unique values from the WordPress API endpoint using the curl command.
$ curl -s https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/
Copy the values to your clipboard.
Edit the WordPress configuration file.
$ sudo nano /usr/local/www/apache24/data/wordpress/wp-config.php
Locate the keys and salts below and replace them with the values you retrieved from the WordPress API.
...
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' );
...
Locate the database settings below.
...
define( 'DB_NAME', 'database_name_here' );
/** MySQL database username */
define( 'DB_USER', 'username_here' );
/** MySQL database password */
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here' );
...
Match the values to the database name, user account, and password that you created earlier. Your completed settings should look similar to the content below. Replace EXAMPLE_PASSWORD with the correct password that you assigned to the wp_user.
define( 'DB_NAME', 'wordpress' );
/** MySQL database username */
define( 'DB_USER', 'wp_user' );
/** MySQL database password */
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'EXAMPLE_PASSWORD' );
...
Save and close the file.
Visit your server's URL in a web browser. Replace example.com with the domain name or public IP address of your webserver.
http://example.com
Select a language and click Continue.
Enter your site information and click Install WordPress to proceed.
Log in to your new WordPress site.