Ubuntu Server and WordPress in 15 Minutes Flat

As some of you know, I have been writing off and on for Packt Publishing‘s online Article Network. I’ve covered a number of Ubuntu related topics such as: “What’s New in Ubuntu 9.10“, “Network Based Ubuntu Installations“, “Ubuntu 9.10: How to Upgrade“, “Creating Local Ubuntu Repositories“, “Five Years of Ubuntu“, “Ubuntu User Interface Tweaks“, “Install GNOME-Shell on Ubuntu 9.10“, “Securely Encrypting Removable Media“, and “Folding @ Home on Ubuntu“.

My latest article, which should be published this week sometime, is a quick-install guide to Ubuntu Server 10.04 toward the goal of a “LAMP” web-server. The article includes screenshots for installing Ubuntu Server, installing the Apache, MySQL and PHP components, and installing a WordPress installation, managed by subversion. It probably sounds like there is quite a bit to it, doesn’t it?

The best part of the article is that you can go from zero to WordPress in fifteen minutes! I’ve timed it. Twice. I setup a virtual machine and by following these instructions I can go from no operating system to a working WordPress installation in under fifteen minutes. It’s really quite amazing! Ubuntu Server is so user friendly, and they’ve put in enough attention to the little details, that really anyone can set up a web server and start publishing content in no time!

I have a follow-up article in the works (still a few weeks out, at least) which outlines expanding your web server to include SSL, virtual hosts (multiple sites), managing and upgrading your WordPress engine using subversion, and more.

I’ll post links when both of these publish. Until then…

Christer

I’d like to invite you to click through and have a look at the new site. Leave a comment. Let me know your thoughts.

Here is to a new year, a new look and new content!

• Reply to comment
• Comment rating
• Sort by: Date, Rating or Activity
• Notification of comments via email

Please let me know if you find any issues with the new system. My hope is that this will allow better communication of user-generated tips and workarounds for many of the tutorials on this site.

Enjoy

First of all let me outline the setup that I have.  I run a number of virtual hosts on my web server.  Probably close to a dozen WP installations, plus a few other sites.  I’ve simplified the installation and updating process for these by using svn, which has been an option from WP for some time now.  Example:

To install a new WordPress blog using svn:

svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.7.1/ .

note: You’ll, of course, want to update the “2.7.1″ tag with the current version at the time of your installation.

note: Make note of the “.” at the end of that command.  Yes, it’s required.  Yes it’ll install WordPress to the directory you run the command in.

To update your installation when word gets out that there has been a new release:

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.7.x/ .

note: see notes above

Now, if you’ve got a number of virtual hosts and multiple wordpress installations installed you could do something like I’ve done and script the process.  Here is an example script I use to update all of my wordpress installations with one command:

#!/bin/bash
# wp-update.sh
# update wordpress installation(s) to $1 branch
#
# this script takes the new branch as an argument

DOMAINS="domain1.tld \
domain2.tld \
domain3.tld \
domain4.tld \
domain5.tld \
domain6.tld \
domain7.tld \
domain8.tld \
domain9.tld \
domain10.tld \
domain11.tld \
domain12.tld"

if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
echo "EPIC FAIL: Missing new version!"
echo "Try: ./wp-upgrade x.x.x (ie; 2.7.1)
exit 1
fi

for site in ${DOMAINS}; do
echo "upgrading ${site}"
echo
cd /var/www/virtual/${site}/html/
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/$1/ . &>/dev/null
done

The only things you’ll really need to keep in mind to use this script are:

1. You’ll need subversion installed.
2. This assumes a virtual host path of /var/www/virtual/${domain}/, and WP root of html/.  Update as necessary.
3. You’ll need to chmod +x this script.

Once you’ve saved and update the script according to your setup you’ll simply want to run the script anytime you get word of a new WordPress release:

./wp-update.sh 2.7.3

Done.  Simple.  Enjoy.

One thing, for example, is that WordPress assumes an Apache server, or something that supports .htaccess files.  This is not the case with Lighttpd, but is solved very, very simply.  Early in my migration I read a number of blog posts suggesting solutions to the WordPress Permalink setup, some more complicated than others.  I have to say that I think I found the simplest solution, and it is rarely seen on other blogs.  Below is one line that will support any WordPress Permalink setup you want:

## Permalink Support:
server.error-handler-404 = "/index.php"

That’s all there is to it.  That one line in the lighttpd.conf will handle the permalinks internally and nothing more is required.  No dealing with weird regex patterns and trying to exclude this or that.  Lighttpd is smart enough to handle it internally with that line.

If you are using a more complex Permalink rewrite configuration in Lighttpd I’d be interested in hearing if this does or does not achieve the same results.

I use svn to manage my installations which makes it really simple.  If you’re considering an upgrade, these are the steps I followed:

1. Make a backup of your current data–can’t be too safe.  Export your current database & php.
2. De-activate current plugins
3. change to the root directory of your blog and execute:
4. svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5/
5. I had an issue with Akismet, so I also then did:
6. rm -r wp-content/plugins/akismet/
7. svn up
8. visit http://your-site.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php
9. re-activate plugins
10. Done

I want to congratulate the WordPress team for a great release.  Things look really sharp this time around and there look to be a lot of UI improvements.  I’m also glad to see I didn’t have any issues upgrading like I did after the early 2.2.x series.

If you haven’t yet started using OpenID you may want to take a look at:

OpenID

MyOpenID

How Did I Fix It?

1. I installed a new blog from scratch at a separate location using the latest version of WordPress.
2. I used the Manage > Export feature within the original WordPress to export the posts, comments and categories.
3. I used the Import > WordPress feature within the new blog to pull in the posts, comments and categories.
4. I verified functionality, manually updated the blog name and URL, etc (mainly a few things on the options menu)
5. Exported the new database via phpmyadmin and saved it to disk.
6. Opened the .sql file with vim and did a find/replace to update the new blog url for the original (ie; :%s/zelut.org/ubuntu-tutorials.com/g)
7. Verified the ‘siteurl’ value and ‘home’ value both matched the original site URL address.
8. Threw out the original blog via phpmyadmin by selecting the database, ‘check all’ on the tables and selecting ‘drop’.
9. Imported the newly exported and updated database to overwrite what was just dropped.
10. Log back into the original site and the blog should be functional.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE RECENT BACKUPS IF YOU ARE GOING TO FOLLOW THESE STEPS.  STEP 7 WILL WIPE OUT ALL DATA FROM YOUR CURRENT BLOG. PLEASE UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE DOING. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LOST DATA.  THIS IS MERELY THE STEPS THAT I TOOK AFTER NOT BEING ABLE TO FIND A SOLUTION ELSEWHERE.  ALWAYS KEEP REGULAR BACKUPS OF YOUR BLOG!

I’m going to have to spend some time this evening updating back piece by piece.  Until then, the blog should work it just looks a bit different.  Hopefully I haven’t lost anything else critical!