How to Install WordPress on VPS Hosting

WordPress, as we’ve seen time and again, is one of the most preferred Content Management Systems with over 33% of

websites across the globe and WordPress Hosting as the preferred hosting. However, depending on your website’s needs and traffic, you may or may not be using WordPress Hosting. Out of the various hosting options available let us assume, you have opted for Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting and now wish to install WordPress. Sounds complex doesn’t it? Worry not, it isn’t!

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through how to install WordPress on VPS Hosting in simple steps. All you need to do is follow these steps and voila your WordPress is install!

For your benefit, I have divided the post into three sub-parts:

1. Placing the orders
2. Installing WordPress on WHM (with a Control Panel)
3. Installing WordPress without a Control Panel

So without further ado, let us begin.

• Placing the orders

The first step before you can install WordPress on VPS is to purchase the domain name and VPS Hosting. We will be purchasing the above from our Control Panel.

1:

Login to our Control Panel, using your Reseller ID and Password. Go to the top right side of the dashboard and click on Buy to purchase orders.

2:

• To purchase a domain, go to ‘Select Product’ and select Domain Registration from the drop-down list
• Enter the domain you want and check if it is available. You can even add Privacy Protection at an added cost

3:

• Once you’ve purchased your domain name it is time for you to purchase your hosting. In the same ‘Select Product’ drop-down, select Linux KVM VPS
• Type the domain name you want to link the hosting with, as well as, all the product specification details as well
• Next, choose if you want any Add-ons, the control panels viz. cPanel and Plesk, and, WHMCS Add-ons available with VPS Hosting. We have selected cPanel and WHMCS.
• Pay the amount and you have successfully purchased the order

4:

Now that you’ve purchase your domain name and VPS Hosting, it automatically gets add to your control panel.

To access the orders, go to the main dashboard and click on Products → List All Orders → Click on the order you want to access.

• Installing WordPress on WHM (with a Control Panel)

Since we purchase the cPanel Add-on we can now access WHM. Softaculous is an Auto-Installer that can be integrate easily into control panels like cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, etc. It is one of the easiest ways to install applications like WordPress, Drupal, phpBB, etc. with a single click. However, Softaculous is not available in WHM and needs to be install.

For installing Softaculous, we need to install it via remote access. If you are using a Linux-based Operating System, then you can run the installation commands directly on your terminal. However, users who use Windows Operating System need to use an emulator. Therefore, to install WordPress you need to:

1. 1. Installing an emulator (Windows)/ Open terminal (Linux)
   2. Installing Softaculous on WHM via emulator/terminal
   3. Installing WordPress using Softaculous

For the benefit of Windows Operating System users, we have listed the below steps to install an emulator called Putty. Putty is an open-source terminal and network file transfer application for Windows and can run the same commands you would run on a Linux-based OS.

1. Installing Putty on your Windows machine

• Go to the official website of Putty
• Click on ‘Download Putty’
• You will be redirect to a new page, where you need to download the package based on your Windows version (32-bit or 64-bit)
• After the .exe file is download, click on Run and install it by clicking on ‘Next’
• Once Putty is successfully install, open the application like you would open any other 
• The following window opens. Here enter the password and you are ready to install Softaculous on WHM

2. Install Softaculous on WHM via an Emulator

1. After logging into your control panel, type in the following command to fetch the installation files of Softaculous
2. After the files are fetch type in the command to change the access permission 
3. Now install the files by typing this command and pressing 
4. After the previous step, it will take a few minutes to install all the scripts. Wait till you get the message ‘Congratulations, Softaculous was install successfully’ on the terminal screen
5. To check if Softaculous is install on the control panel:
6. Log In to WHM
7. Select Plugins on the Home Page (Add-Ons on older versions than 11)
8. Softaculous – Instant Installs

3. Install WordPress using Softaculous

Several scripts come pre-installed with Softaculous. Having successfully install Softaculous, you can now install WordPress on VPS via cPanel.

• Go to the Softaculous dashboard and
• search ‘WordPress’. Once you find the icon (i.e the script) double click on it, this opens a new window
• Here, on the ‘Install’ tab enter the necessary details viz. the domain name you want to install the software on, protocol, language, etc. and click on the ‘Install’ button at the bottom of the page
• Once your software is install, you would get the following message as seen in the image below on your screen. You can now customize your WordPress site as per your needs

• Installing WordPress Manually Without a Control Panel

WordPress can be install on your VPS in 4 simple steps and although this process is simple, it requires a technical background. So here we go:

1. Create a Database and a User

We would once again be using either the Putty (if Windows) or Terminal if using Linux OS to access the hosting server via SSH.

1. • After logging into your root account type in the following commands to create a database Mysql
     → Enter the database name
     create database database_name;→ Replace your database name, username, and password in the command
     grant all privileges on database_name.* to database_user@localhost identified by ‘database_user_password’;
   • The image below is a representation of the commands where:wp_database == database name
     wp_user == database user
     Passw0rd == password of the user

2. Download WordPress

WordPress can be download in 2 ways viz:

Upload the WordPress contents to your server via FTP or

Directly download the files on the server via SSH

We would be downloading WordPress viz the second method, using SSH.

Step 1: Go to the website root directory of your domain
For understanding purpose, let us consider your directory is /home/demobigo/public_html

Type the following command: cd /home/demobigo/public_html

2: To download WordPress to your server, type in the following commands

3: WordPress will be extracted in a folder called WordPress inside /home/demobigo/public_html
i.e /home/demobigo/public_html/ WordPress

We would once again be using either the Putty (if Windows) or Terminal if using Linux OS to access the hosting server via SSH.

1. • After logging into your root account type in the following commands to create a database Mysql
     → Enter the database name
     create database database_name;→ Replace your database name, username, and password in the command
     grant all privileges on database_name.* to database_user@localhost identified by ‘database_user_password’;
   • The image below is a representation of the commands where:wp_database == database name
     wp_user == database user
     Passw0rd == password of the user

3. Edit the WordPress Configuration file

To edit the configuration file you can either create and edit the wp-config.php file manually, or let WordPress do the configuration itself when you run the installation script.
If you wish to configure it yourself then run the following commands:

1. Rename the file wp-config-sample.php as wp-config.phpTo do this, run this command in the directory you installed WordPress:
   → mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php
2. Open the file wp-config.php using the editor (vi editor in Linux and vim editor in Windows)To do this, run this command in the directory where you installed WordPress:

4. Run the Installation Script

1. 1. If you have installed WordPress on the main domain, just visit: http://rosetintedglasses.com/wp-admin/install.php
   2. If you have installed WordPress in a folder say blog, just visit: http://rosetintedglasses.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php
   3. Fill in the Site Title, Username, password & other fields and click Install WordPress.

Conclusion

With this, we come to an end of our tutorial on, ‘how to install WordPress on VPS’. Installing WordPress on VPS can seem to be complicate, however, if the steps are carry out in a simplify manner then the process is easy. Also, if you are using our Dedicated Hosting then the steps to install WordPress remain the same, as the working of VPS is similar to that of Dedicated Server.

Hope this tutorial was helpful to you. If you have any suggestions, queries or questions feel free to leave a comment below and we’ll get back to you. With this, I bid you adieu, until next time folks!