Install WordPress with Nginx on Rackspace Cloud Server

This guide shows how to install WordPress with Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04 with step by step commands and explanation of the steps of what we are doing. We usually publish a video guide separately which are available on YouTube and iTunes as Podcast. The reader should know minimum about nginx HTTP Server. This guide is intended for new nginx users, therefore we have not underwent complex steps or further tweak for optimization. One can use either an one GB server or even a 512 MB server to run WordPress with nginx – it is impossible with Apache to run a bigger site with lower RAM, but ngnix can handle efficiently.

Install WordPress with Nginx : Forewords

Nginx can be used for reverse proxying too. In this guide we are assuming that the reader has a WordPress website running on Apache server. So, we need to install WordPress with Nginx on Rackspace cloud server freshly. If one need to migrate, he/she have to upload the uploads and other contents on nginx server, import the posts, category and pages with WordPress default XML export-import feature. This will fully avoid any problem with permalink structure. We have kept the settings of nginx to default. There is no reason to make it complex by changing the default settings.

Install WordPress with Nginx on Rackspace Cloud Server

First, spin a server instance of your desired size. Save the password in some text editor. Copy the public IP address of the server. After the server is up and running; SSH to the server as root :

Save the key by hitting y as prompted. Update and upgrade the instance :

For 512 MB instance, you might face a text based interface for boot configuration prompting you to select which one to keep. Simply hit the Return / Enter key – we will keep the things as suggested, to default.

Now, compare the installation method we do for installing WordPress with Apache, on Ubuntu 14.04 on Rackspace Cloud Server. Here we will install latest version of nginx first :

and then all the needed components of PHP to run WordPress :

Now we need to configure nginx. Basically we need not to touch the config file :

We only need to edit the /etc/nginx/sites-available/default file, which is somewhat equivalent to Apache+Ubuntu’s /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf file. Open it :

There will be lot of commented out lines, you must have active file looking like this :

Carefully compare what I have changed. Give a bit time, it is worthy.

do a reload of nginx :

Install everything we will need for running WordPress plus xCache for caching :

Make sure that we have lib ssh :

restrat both ngnix and php-fpm :

Now, compared to Apache, our document root is at /usr/share/nginx/html ; this is for a philosophical matter of Deb based distro. However, we think, we should not use www as the path anymore, because that was out of a mistake and copy of mistake. The permission at /usr/share/nginx/html is almost perfect and secure.

Now install MySQL server and Client (client is optional) :

type a password for MySQL root user and remember it. Read the MySQL

Now delete the html file at root :

You can test PHP by creating an index.php file at root :

Fill up with :

If you point to your IP address, you’ll get the PHP info page. Delete it before installing WordPress :

Now, go to html directory :

Download WordPress and untar :

Edit wp-config :

You will need to edit these :

Run the WordPress installation script by visiting the IP or domain name. We need one more component to install, otherwise, you will lot of error if you run php5-fpm -v command.

Obviously, tweaking is required, but that is a separate chapter!