How to install and configure WordPress hosted on Nginx with PHP-FPM on Debian based distros

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

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16 simple ways to secure your WordPress site

WordPress is a popular target for attackers and currently there are a lot of botnets discovering vulnerable sites and trying to brute force the admin password. If you haven’t hardened your WordPress installation, this is the perfect time to do that.

1. Don’t use the defaults

When installing a new instance of WordPress, make sure you choose other name for the administrator account than admin and change the default table prefix (wp_) to anything else.
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