Installing WordPress CMS on Debian/Ubuntu

WordPress is a CMS (content manager system) that is to say it is an application that allows you to create a blog of information. However, over time has evolved and not only provides services to create blogs but corporate websites or what you can imagine.

Prerequisites

• Apache
• MySQL/MariaDB
• PHP

Install LAMP Stack and Required PHP Extensions

sudo apt-get install -y apache2 mariadb-server php libapache2-mod-php php-{bcmath,bz2,intl,gd,mbstring,mysql,zip,cli,fpm,opcache,xml,curl,intl,xsl,soap,json,apcu,imap}

Secure MySQL/MariaDB database server

Then, set a root password and secure the installation.

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Say “y” to all the questions.

Create a database for WordPress 

sudo mysql -uroot -p  (provide your MySQL root password) 

create database wordpress;

CREATE USER 'wordpress'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'wordpress123';

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'wordpress'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

quit;

Install WordPress 

Now it is your turn to install WordPress. However, first, you have to download it. For that, I will use wget.

So, run the following command:

cd /var/www/html

sudo wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

sudo tar xvfz latest.tar.gz

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data wordpress

sudo chmod 755 -R wordpress

sudo chmod -R 777 /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content

Create Virtualhost for WordPress

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/wordpress.conf

And add the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>

     ServerAdmin admin@your_domain.com

      DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wordpress

      ServerName your-domain.com

     <Directory /var/www/html/wordpress>

          Options FollowSymlinks

          AllowOverride All

          Require all granted

     </Directory>

     ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_error.log

     CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Replace  “your-domain” with yours. Save the changes and close the file.

Then you have to enable the new Virtualhost and also the Apache rewrite module. And for all this to work, then we’ll have to restart Apache.

sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/wordpress.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/wordpress.conf

sudo a2enmod rewrite

sudo systemctl reload apache2

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Now complete the installation

Now, you have to complete the installation using the web browser. Access to your server and you will see this a prompt where you need to provide database connection details and create an admin account

Automate WordPress Backups

Here's what we will be backing up:

• WordPress database: The WordPress database contains all your text-based content including your posts, pages, comments, tags, categories, links, etc.
• WordPress Uploads Folder: The uploads folder contains all your images/media files.
• WordPress Theme Folder: The theme folder contains your theme files. This includes all your theme customizations.
• WordPress Plugin Folder: The folder contains the plugin which you have installed

Your backups will be compressed using gzip and you will be able to open them using a program like WinRar or Winzip.

Before beginning, here are the steps involved in a nutshell:

• Create a backup folder in the server to save the backups in.
• Create a .sh file with the bash shell script and upload it to the server.
• Create a cron job to call and run this script on a daily basis.
• Sync the backed-up files and save them in Google Drive.

So let's look at these steps in detail:

Creating the Backup Folder

The first step is to create a backup folder on your server. This is the folder where all your backup files will be saved. You can create this folder under your server's etc folder or simply create a new folder in your home directory as follows:

Step 1: SSH to your server as the root user. I usually access the server using a terminal in Linux. You can use Putty in windows for accessing the server.

Step 2: Go to your home directory. 

 

cd /home/username

Step 3: Create a folder named 'wp-backup' in the home directory.

 

sudo mkdir wp-backup

Adding the Shell Script 

We will now create a sh file with the bash shell script inside our backup folder using any text editor, I am here using vim, if you are not familiar with vim, use nano.

Create a file named backup.sh and add the following code to it modify with your username and WordPress database details

sudo vim /usr/local/bin/wpbackup.sh

#!/bin/bash

 

## 1: Your backups will use these filenames.

db_backup_name="wp-db-backup-$(date +%d-%m-%Y-%H.%M).sql.gz"

wpfiles_backup_name="wp-files-backup-$(date +%d-%m-%Y-%H.%M).tar.gz"

## 2: Database connection info. You can get these details from your wp-config file.

db_name="wordpress"

db_username="wordpress"

db_password="wordpress123"

## 3: Path to your WordPress Upload and Theme directories. Replace /home/mahesh/ with path to your home directory.

wp_upload_folder="/var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/themes"

wp_theme_folder="/var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/uploads" 

wp_plugin_folder="/var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins"

 

## 4: Path to your backup folder. Replace /home/username/ with the path to your home directory.

backup_folder_path="/home/username/wp-backup"

## 5: Backup MYSQL database, gzip it and send to backup folder.

mysqldump --opt -u$db_username -p$db_password $db_name | gzip > $backup_folder_path/$db_backup_name

## 6: Create a tarball of the wordpress files, gzip it and send to backup folder.

tar -czf $backup_folder_path/$wpfiles_backup_name $wp_upload_folder $wp_theme_folder $wp_plugin_folder

## 7: Sync to Google Drive using rclone

rclone sync /home/username/wp-backup Gdrive:UPCLOUD-DBBACKUPS

## 8: Delete all but 5 recent wordpress database back-ups (files having .sql.gz extension) in the backup folder.

find $backup_folder_path -maxdepth 1 -name "*.sql.gz" -type f | xargs -x ls -t | awk 'NR>5' | xargs -L1 rm

## 9: Delete all but 5 recent wordpress files back-ups (files having .tar.gz extension) in backup folder.

find $backup_folder_path -maxdepth 1 -name "*.tar.gz" -type f | xargs -x ls -t | awk 'NR>5' | xargs -L1 rm

Give the necessary permission to the shell script and assign the task in cron according to your time 

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/wpbackup.sh

crontab -e

#WordPress backup 

0 0 * * * /usr/local/bin/wpbackup.sh

This script backs up the WordPress database and then gzips it and saves it in the backup folder.

The backups will follow this naming convention:

Database Backup:  wp-db-backup-day-month-year-hour-minute.sql.gz eg: wp-db-backup-30-08-2021-08.55.sql.gz

How to configure Gdrive using rclone

https://libtechnophile.blogspot.com/2020/07/using-google-drive-on-debianubuntu-with.html

Reference:

https://libtechnophile.blogspot.com/2020/07/setting-up-ftp-server-vsftpd-on.html