Configuring WordPress services revision 1

Introduction

This page describes how Alexis Huxley installed and configured WordPress.

Procedure

1. Run:

   apt-get install wordpress mysql-server libssh2-php

2. Apache2:

   Alias /wordpress/wp-content /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content
   Alias /wordpress /usr/share/wordpress
   <Directory /usr/share/wordpress>
       Options FollowSymLinks
       AllowOverride Limit Options FileInfo
       DirectoryIndex index.php
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
   </Directory>
   <Directory /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content>
       Options FollowSymLinks
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
   </Directory>

3. Mysql:

   vermicelli# mysql
   mysql> create database wordpress;
   Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
   
   mysql> grant all privileges on wordpress.* to "wordpress"@"localhost" \
       identified by "SUPERSECRETPASSWORD";
   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
   
   mysql> flush privileges;
   Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
   
   mysql> <CTRL-D>
   vermicelli#

4. Test:

   vermicelli# w3m -dump http://localhost/blog/
   Neither /etc/wordpress/config-localhost.php nor /etc/wordpress/
   config-localhost.php could be found.
   Ensure one of them exists, is readable by the webserver and contains the right
   password/username.
   vermicelli#

5. Proxy:

       ProxyPass /wordpress/ http://192.168.1.11/wordpress/
       ProxyPassReverse /wordpress/ http://192.168.1.11/wordpress/

6. WP config:

   vermicelli# cat /etc/wordpress/config-no-ip.org.php
   <?php
   define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');
   define('DB_USER', 'wordpress');
   define('DB_PASSWORD', 'SUPERSECRETPASSWORD');
   define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
   define('SECRET_KEY', 'PNDEmese10MsJEv9BYA2umcp8QRiylcQy9uRo0DnlF');
   define('WP_CONTENT_DIR', '/var/lib/wordpress/wp-content');
   ?>
   vermicelli#

7. Allow theme installation:

   chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content

8. To make permalinks (nicely named links) work:

   chown www-data:www-data /usr/share/wordpress/.htaccess
   a2enmod rewrite
   service apache2 restart

9. Go to https://www.pasta.freemyip.com/ it should look like this:
   
10. Theme tuning:

    vi /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content/themes/reddle/footer.php

11. To get rid of horizontal scrollbars in preformatted blocks, which are inserted by Reddle, go to Dashboard –> Appearance –> Editor and locate the CSS code:

    overflow-x: scroll;

    and change this to:

    overflow-x: auto;

12. Install the following plugins:
    • Akismet
    • Cleaner Gallery
    • Easy Content Templates
    • Easy FancyBox
    • Jetpack Lite
    • Manage Upload Types
    • MapPress Easy Google Maps
    • Media File Manager
    • Quick Cache
    • Simplified Google Maps Light
    • TablePress
    • WordPress Importer
    • WP SlimStat
    • YouTube
13. The Quick Cache plugin is enabled by running the following command:

    perl -pi -e "s/(<\?php)/\$1 define('WP_CACHE', true);/" /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php

14. The ‘MapPress Easy Google Maps’ plugin puts, what appears to be, a gray top border around maps. More likely, this is a border around an item that I do not display. To get rid of this, edit /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/mappress-google-maps-for-wordpress/css/mappress.css and change this:

    /* Links for the map */
    .mapp-map-links {
            background-color: #F0F0F0;
            border-top: 1px solid lightgray;
            border-bottom: 1px solid lightgray;
    }

    to this:

    /* Links for the map */
    .mapp-map-links {
            background-color: #F0F0F0;
            /*
             *  Next lines commented out by Alexis, to remove top gray
             *  border from above maps. Note that *both* the border-top
             *  and border-bottom need to be removed; presumably, it is
             * not the *map* that has a border, but rather some other
             * item that is empty.
             */
    
            /* border-top: 1px solid lightgray
            border-bottom: 1px solid lightgray; */
    }

15. Enable RPAF (so that the stats modules use the real clients’ IP addresses and not the proxy’s) as follows:
    1. Run:

       apt-get install libapache2-mod-rpaf

    2. Add the following to the apache configuration:

       RPAFenable On
       RPAFsethostname On
       RPAFproxy_ips <ip-of-first-proxy> ...

    3. Run:

       service apache2 restart

16. When uploading GPX files to my Cycling pages, I hit the maximum upload limit for a file, which was 2MB; this is not a WordPress issue, but rather issue with the underlying PHP. To fix it run:

    find /etc/php* -type f -exec grep -ril upload_max_filesize {} \; | xargs sed -i 's/\(upload_max_filesize\) = .*/\1 = 20M/'
    find /etc/php* -type f -exec grep -ril post_max_size       {} \; | xargs sed -i 's/\(post_max_size\) = .*/\1 = 19M/'
    service apache2 restart

    (Note how the thresholds are raised to different values; this will make it easier to determine which threshold is reached, if any.)

See also

• Computing