Hi, As we all know, hosting a WordPress site is easy but optimizing it to load faster with the minimum bugs is not a bad of roses.
Today, we are going to install LEMP stack on Ubuntu 18.04 + Varnish cache to facilitate the fastest loading speed.
Deploy the server from anywhere. Just make sure that you have ubuntu 18.04 droplet. It can be Google cloud, Vultr, DigitalOcean or any other VPS provider.
LOGIN as root in putty, terminal or browser SSH terminal.
Start with the commands below.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo mysql_secure_installation
sudo apt-get install php-fpm php-mysql
sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
You will see a line cgi.fix_pathinfo=1, if the line is quoted, remove the quote and replace ‘0’ with ‘1’
cgi.fix_pathinfo=0
service php7.2-fpm start
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
server{
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server;
root /var/www/mydomain; index index.php
index.html index.htm index.nginx-debin.html;
server_name mydomain;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include $nippets/fastcgi.php.conf;
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
}
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
}
sudo mkdir /var/www/mydomain
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl reload nginx
Now, the server is setup. Lets install PhpMyadmin
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin
Lets link to Phpmyadmin
sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www/mydomain
sudo phpenmod mcrypt
Do not panic if the above command does not work. Let’s move the next.
sudo service php7.2-fpm restart
Let’s change the phpmyadmin dashboard location
cd /var/www/mydomain
sudo mv phpmyadmin qu_db
Our PHPMyAdmin is also setup Now.
So far, we have installed Nginx, PHP 7.2 fpm and phpmyadmin on the Ubuntu 18.04.
Now is the time to access your MySQL through SSH and create database, user and grant all permissions.
LOGIN to your server as root and enter the mysql-
sudo mysql -u root -p
Enter password and hit enter.
Lets create a database (below are SQL commands)
CREATE DATABASE wordpress DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER ‘wordpress’@‘localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;
GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO ‘wordpress’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;
Now is the time to login to your database through the phpmyadmin console.
I will use FileZilla to upload the WordPress files in the document root directory of the server.
Download WordPress
- Edit the wp-config.php
- Archive the whole WordPress
- Rename it to wordpress.zip
- Upload it to /var/www/mydomain
I am back on the SSH terminal Now and I will install zip unzip on the server.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install zip unzip
Navigate to the document root and unzip the file here.
cd /var/www/mydomain/
sudo unzip wordpress.zip
sudo rm -r wordpress.zip
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/mydomain
Your server stack is all set to host the wordpress website.
- Open http://mydomain.com
- WordPress Installation wizard opens
- Fill up the required fields and run the installation
Next – Install Varnish Cache on Nginx server
sudo apt -y install varnish nginx
ss -tlnf inet
After successful installation your Nginx server Line 4should be listening on port 80. Varnish on Lines 6,7is using both 6081 and 6082 ports.
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
In the default hosting block, the server should listen to port 8080
server {
listen 8080 default_server;
listen [::]:8080 default_server;
Save the file and exit.
sudo service nginx reload
ss -tlnf inet
Nginx should now be listening on new default port 8080 as shown on Line 4 from the ss command output:
If you want to replace the normal Nginx default page to a varnish default page, run below command. (optional)
$ sudo sed -i ‘s/nginx/Varnish cache server on Nginx/g’ /var/www/html/index.nginx-debian.html
sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/varnish.service
Edit Line 9 and change default port 6081 to port 80 as shown bellow:
Instructing Varnish to rely on nginx.
sudo nano /etc/varnish/default.vcl
The file should have port set to 8080. (check and set port to 8080 if it is 80.)
backend default {
.host = “127.0.0.1”;
.port = “8080”;
}
All set! Lets reload the Nginx server.
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo service varnish restart
TESTING VARNISH CACHE
curl -I varnish-server-ubuntu
It may ask you to first install curl. Run the below command if you see such error.
sudo apt-get install curl
The response should look something like this:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.13.6 (Ubuntu)
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 03:50:52 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Last-Modified: Thu, 22 Feb 2018 03:08:27 GMT
ETag: W/“5a8e342b-324”
Vary: Accept-Encoding
X-Varnish: 2
Age: 0
Via: 1.1 varnish (Varnish/5.2)
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Connection: keep-alive
Your site is on one of the fastest WordPress server stack. Enjoy!
Cheers…..
