Nginx is an open source web server. Users have been moving to Nginx because of the high performance and stability and as of February 2014, Nginx is hosting around 15% of all web servers according to Netcraft’s Web Server Survey. Nginx is a great option for hosting WordPress sites.
It’s assumed that you have already installed Nginx with PHP-FPM. If you haven’t already done that, you can use this tutorial: How to install Nginx with PHP and MySql support on wheezy
1. Create the database for WordPress
mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE {database};
CREATE USER {username}@localhost;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON {username}.* TO {database}@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '{password}';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit
Replace {database}, {username} and {password} with the database name and credentials you want to use. You will use this in the WordPress installer.
2. Download the latest version of WordPress
cd /usr/share/nginx/www wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
In this tutorial, I’m using /usr/share/nginx/www/wordpress but you probably want to change that into something else.
3. Extract WordPress
cd wordpress tar zxvf latest.tar.gz
4. Make wp-content writable and the root directory temporarily writable to allow WordPress to create the config file
chmod o+w ./ chmod 777 wp-content -R
5. Change the directory owner and group to www-data
chown www-data.www-data ./ -R
6. Create a Nginx virtual host (pico /etc/nginx/sites-available/wordpress)
The contents should be similar to the text below, you may need to adjust the root and host name
server {
listen 80;
root /usr/share/nginx/www/wordpress;
index index.php;
server_name {domain};
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
Change {domain} to the domain or host that you want to use for the new WordPress site
7. Enable the new virtual host
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/wordpress /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/wordpress
8. Restart Nginx
/etc/init.d/nginx restart
9. Run the WordPress installer by opening this location in a web browser. You will have to provide the database credentials and some more information for the setup.
http://{domain}
Change {domain} to the server name used in the Nginx virtual host file
10. When the installer has completed, change the permissions of the root directory
chmod o-w ./