lizferLinux

Provisioning of a Wordpress website implementation on cloud based on a server with LAMP (Linux 🐧, Apache2 🖌️, MySQL 🐬 and PHP 🐘). Check it at http://188.166.90.196 / http://www.lizfer.com.

I decided to create a personal space where I could demonstrate my Linux system administration skills. The prerrogative was:

• This space needs to be operational anytime, anywhere (availability); and
• it must meet minimal performance standards (reliability).

1. Linux machine

1.a: Provisioning the cloud machine

The first step was provisioning an instance (that is, a droplet) at Digital Ocean. My pick was Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, hosted at Amsterdam (default-ams3).

After having the instance ready (with my SSH public and private keys properly installed), the next step was configuring the server to have the LAMP setup installed.

First things first: ssh root@188.166.90.196 into it, then apt-get update && apt-get upgrade. Now, good practices: create a regular user and stop using the root account.

1.b: User creation and authentication

This was pretty straightforward:

1. Ran adduser lizfer and created the PID 1000 user;
2. Added it to the sudoers group using usermod -aG sudo lizfer;
3. Allowed it to use the SSH public key by copying it from root (and granted ownership of this copy) using rsync: rsync --archive --chown=lizfer:lizfer ~/.ssh /home/lizfer.

At this point, my newly-created user had administrative privileges whenever it used sudo and I could use this account to access from any remote client that had the SSH private key installed.

1.c: Firewall

Although this was a simple demonstration, it's always good practice to have a firewall set, to avoid undesired connections. Since that this is an Ubuntu machine, I used UFW. To enable it, I just had to enter ufw enable. As other software are installed, description on firewall settings will be added.

2. Apache2

From this moment onwards, I decided to authenticate using the PID 1000 account (lizfer) for testing reasons - hence why lots of sudo will appear.

Configuring the "A" in LAMP was a handful of work - my first attempt was configuring a Nginx web server, but conflicts with php-fpm and cacheing prevented me from doing so.

2.a: Downloading

The first step was getting Apache2 from Ubuntu's repos using sudo apt install apache2. Just had to accept the installation terms.

2.b: Firewall settings

By downloading Apache, UFW automatically creates profiles for Apache based on ports available for access. By entering sudo ufw app list, the list of available applications was prompted on the stdout (tl;dr: Apache profile opens only port 80, Apache Full opens both port 80 and port 443 and Apache Secure opens only port 443):

Available applications:
  Apache
  Apache Full
  Apache Secure
  OpenSSH

To configure the TLS/SSL certificate for Wordpress, I allowed communication in ports 80 and 443 by enabling the Apache Full profile: sudo ufw allow in "Apache Full".

3. MySQL

It might look scary at first, but setting up a database was not that difficult due to Ubuntu's configuration.

3.a: Download and configuration

Just had to use sudo apt install mysql-server to start downloading. Once completed, I ran sudo mysql_secure_installation to configure it using MySQL's security script:

• For the VALIDATE PASSWORD PLUGIN, I set a MySQL root password with STRONG length (security should always be strong, IMHO);
• Disabled root account access from a remote client (outside of the local host);
• Removed anonymous user pre-set accounts;
• Removed the test database, and privileges that allow access to databases with names starting with "test_".

Setting up a MySQL root password was extremely cautious, since that the default authentication method for root is using a unix_socket.

3.b: Creating user and database for Wordpress

Wordpress saves information on a database to manage the website and information. I created a new database and user for security reasons (the same ones why I created the PID 1000 user).

• First, I entered as root using mysql -u root -p;
• Created the wordpress database using CREATE DATABASE wordpress DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;;
• Created the lizfer user with CREATE USER 'lizfer'@'%' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'psswd'; ('psswd' is not the real password, obviously);
• Granted full access on wordpress to lizfer: GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO 'lizfer'@'%'; and updated MySQL's privileges using FLUSH PRIVILEGES.

4. PHP

PHP installation by itself is not enough: I also installed several other packages, such as php-mysql (module that allows PHP to communicate with MySQL) and libapache2-mod-php (to enable Apache to handle PHP files), for example:

sudo apt install php php-mysql libapache2-mod-php php-curl php-gd php-mbstring php-xml php-xmlrpc php-soap php-intl php-zip.

At this point, the LAMP stack was already installed and I had a production instance working.

5. Pre-Wordpress Configuration

This chapter is reserved for configuration that must be applied before installing Wordpress.

5.a: Apache's Virtual Host configuration

I decided to use this machine for hosting more than one domain. Therefore, the configuration of an Apache Virtual Host was necessary. Data is displayed as lizfer but this is a placeholder - upon provisioning a new domain for this machine, the proper data must be used.

The default /var/www/html directory remained as backup for the original files; I created a new folder under www (sudo mkdir /var/www/lizfer) and assigned its ownership to the PID 1000 user (sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/lizfer).

Then, I created a new configuration file under Apache structure using Nano: sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/lizfer.conf and included the following content in it:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName lizfer
    ServerAlias www.lizfer.com
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/lizfer
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =www.lizfer.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =lizfer
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]
<Directory /var/www/lizfer/>
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>    
</VirtualHost>

I used sudo a2ensite lizfer to instruct Apache which is the current active server, and disabled the default website using sudo a2dissite 000-default. Ran the final configuration test with sudo apache2ctl configtest (with a Syntax OK response) and rebooted the instance.

5.b: Domain acquisition and configuration

I acquired the lizfer.com domain on Google Domains ("Why?" you ask. "Billing" is the answer) and set it to route to my droplet's IP address:

5.c: CA configuration

This process was added because WordPress deals with personal data, which requires some TLS/SSL security. For the Certificate Authority, I chose Let's Encrypt because it automatizes most processes with Certbot and it easily integrates with Apache. A few more sub-steps:

• Installed the certbot and python3-certbot-apache (integration between Apache and Certbot) packages: sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache;
• Used the Apache plugin for Certbot to set up authentication and installation: sudo certbot --apache

Then, up to configuring Wordpress! 🚀

6. Wordpress

6.a: Download and extraction

As a good practice, the latest Wordpress version should be downloaded straight from their website using curl.

• First: moved to a writable, temporary directory: cd /tmp
• Downloaded using curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz;
• Extracted the file using tar xzvf latest.tar.gz;
• Created a dummy .htaccess file for Wordpress: touch /tmp/wordpress/.htaccess and copied the sample config file for the Wordpress to read: cp /tmp/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php /tmp/wordpress/wp-config.php;
• Avoided future Wordpress permission issues upon updating by creating an upgrade directory: mkdir /tmp/wordpress/wp-content/upgrade;
• Copied the whole content of the directory to Apache's directory: sudo cp -a /tmp/wordpress/. /var/www/lizfer/;
• Granted ownership to www-data (user and group) on Apache's directory: sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/lizfer;
• Set proper permissions on Wordpress folders using find: sudo find /var/www/lizfer/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \; and sudo find /var/www/lizfer/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;;
• Removed the index.html file from the Wordpress directory (Wordpress prioritizes HTML files, but we'll use PHP): sudo rm /var/www/lizfer/index.html.

6.b: Security

Upon configuring, Wordpress requires to adjust some secret keys:

• Obtained random values from Wordpress' secret key generator using curl -s https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/;
• Entered the proper values on Wordpress' config file using nano: sudo nano /var/www/lizfer/wp-config.php, together with defining other settings (database name, username and password);
• Defined the filesystem writing method (FS_METHOD) to direct, on the bottom of this very same file, to avoid prompting for FTP credentials when posting or querying for a blog entry (for example):

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define( 'DB_NAME', 'wordpress' );

/** MySQL database username */
define( 'DB_USER', 'lizfer' );

/** MySQL database password */
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'psswd' );

... 

/** Pretend this is the end of the file, OK? */
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');

• Enabled .htaccess overrides by editing sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/lizfer-le-ssl.conf (to include the SSL exceptions):

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName lizfer
    ServerAlias www.lizfer.com
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/lizfer
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.lizfer.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/www.lizfer.com/privkey.pem
Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
<Directory /var/www/lizfer/>
    AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

6.c Final configuration on the web interface

Since that the index.html file was deleted, Wordpress switched to load index.php - I had to enter https://www.lizfer.com to configure it on the web interface.

After selecting the language, the five-minutes-express installation page was prompted. I chose a username, created another password and completed the installation.

(Tweaks will be added with time.)

Voilá!

Thanks

• Digital Ocean, for great documentation where I learned from and hosting my website
• @groovemonkey (Dave Cohen) for his awesome Udemy course and other content on Youtube