Page 6 WordPress via svn and setting up W3 Total Cache
The server is ready to install WordPress
Create your database
mysql -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 5340 to server version: 3.23.54
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
mysql> CREATE DATABASE databasename;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON databasename.* TO "user_name"@"localhost"
-> IDENTIFIED BY "password";
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
mysql> EXIT
Bye
Install WordPress via SVN
cd /srv/www/yourdomain/public svn co http://core.svn.wordpress.org/tags/3.2.1 .
Add your database info to wp-config.php and install by visiting yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php
Use the Compatibility Check in W3 Total Cache to make sure everything is set up right. Yours will look similar to this one.
Set page cache and minify to disk enhanced. Object and database to APC. You can experiment with page cache via APC but with Nginx disk enhanced will most likely be faster.
Final thoughts
If your doing this for the first time set up a test install to get the hang of if before you rely on this for a production set up or client site. Using Debian and the apt-get repos it’s pretty easy to manage your own dedicated server or VPS and you can lose the cPanel training wheels. Not only will your page load times drop you will have a good feeling of accomplishment.
To maintain your packages run apt-get update and apt-get upgrade every once in a while and you can follow @dotdeb on Twitter to stay up to date with upgrades.
Feel free to leave a comment or question. I would love to hear how this set up works for you.
Resources and further reading
just checking one thing: the w3 total cache rewrite rules are only needed if using disk cache, right?
Yes you really only need the W3 rules for disc cache. They just add a finer level of control for the browser cache rules. I just updated the server file to show a full example of the W3 Rules using disk enhanced page cache and disk minify.
Hi,
Great post, thanks a lot for the information. From the title I got the impression, you were going into the details of multiple wp installs with one ngnix or via multiple xen installs.
Do you have any best practices about this? Or even some up to date ressources?
Thanks again for the great post.
Hi Costa,
Thanks for the feedback. I updated the post to include configuration files for a WordPress multisite and also hosting multiple sites on the server.
Hi,
Thanks a lot for the additional configuration information. It’s really helpful.
Regards
I’ve got a noob question about SSH keys. If I’ve installed the SSH key on the server it means that I can only login to it from my computer right? What if I don’t have my computer with me and have an emergency and need to SSH into the server?
Using SSH keys you will only be able to login if your computer contains a private key that matches a public key installed on the server. I prefer the added added security they provide but if you often need to access your server away from your computer then maybe a really strong password would be better for you.
If your using password authentication you can change the ssh port to prevent a majority of the brute force attempts. Also some VPS and dedicated server hosts have a java console you can use to access your server without having to use your ssh keys.
Just a note that “you are” is shortened to “you’re”, not “your”.
Otherwise, thanks for the great write up!
Hey Guys:
Awesome tutorial — my first foray into nginx w/ wordpress.
A couple things I got snagged on in the tutorial & the fixes:
> When installing everything the first ‘php5-mysql’ should be ‘mysql-server’ instead since there is already a php5-mysql package a little later in the command
> There’s a missing closing ‘}’ at the end of the file in the sites conf
> Upon trying to install wordpress I got “Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.” Fixed this by editing the php.ini inside the php-fpm dir.
>> I un-commented ‘extention=mysql.so’ as well as uncommenting ‘extention_dir = “./”‘ and changing ‘./’ to /usr/lib/php5/20090626+lfs and all was well.
Thanks again guys! Loving nginx so far!
Hi
Great guide thank you, I have one question about file ownerships/permissions.
Presumably everything in my site’s public folder needs to be owned by www-data and in the www-data group?
If so, how can I then upload and/or edit files when logged in as a non-root user? Do I just need to add my user to the www-data group?
Any advice much appreciated, I find this bit quite confusing!
Any recommendations for creating init scripts to ensure all the services start automatically after a reboot?