How to Install WordPress with LAMP on RHEL Based Distributions

WordPress is a free and open source blogging application and dynamic CMS (content management system) developed using MySQL and PHP.

It has a huge number of third-party plugins and themes. WordPress is currently one of the most popular blogging platforms available on the web and is used by millions of people around the world.

In this guide, we will explain how to install the popular content management system WordPress using LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP) on RHEL based distributions such as CentOS Stream, Fedora, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux.

Installing EPEL and the Remi repository

The installation we will be doing will be done on Rocky Linux, but the same instructions also work on RHEL, CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux, and AlmaLinux distributions.

First, install and enable the EPEL and Remi repository using the following commands.

------------------- On RHEL 9 Based Distributions ------------------- 
# dnf install 

# dnf install

-------------------On RHEL 8 Based Distributions ------------------- # dnf install # dnf install

-------------------On Fedora 36/35 ------------------- # dnf install # dnf install

Since we are going to use PHP 8, we will need to reset PHP to default and enable the PHP 8 version using the following commands.

# yum install dnf-utils
# dnf module list php
# dnf module reset php
# dnf module enable php:remi-8.0

How to install WordPress with LAMP on RHEL based distributions

Installing the LAMP stack for WordPress

We are now ready to install all the required packages related to our LAMP stack with the following command.

# yum install httpd mariadb mariadb-server php-gd php-soap php-intl php-mysqlnd php-pdo php-pecl-zip php-fpm php-opcache php-curl php-zip php-xmlrpc wget

Now that the installation is complete, we need to start and secure our MariaDB installation.

# systemctl start mariadb
# mysql_secure_installation

Follow the on-screen instructions to answer questions related to the security of your MariaDB server.

We will then configure MariaDB to start automatically on system boot:

# systemctl enable mariadb

Next, we'll do the same for the Apache web server:

# systemctl start httpd
# systemctl enable httpd

Creating a WordPress MySQL Database

Our WordPress will require a database and a database user. To create it, just use the following commands. Feel free to change the database name, user and password to suit your preferences:

# mysql -u root -p Enter password:  ## Create database ##CREATE DATABASE wordpress;  ## Creating new user ##CREATE USER [email protected] IDENTIFIED BY "secure_password";  ## Grant privileges to database ##GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO [email protected];  ## FLUSH privileges ##FLUSH PRIVILEGES;  ## Exit ##exit

Preparing to Install WordPress

We are now ready to download the latest WordPress archive using the following wget command:

# cd /tmp & wget

Then unzip the archive to our web directory:

# tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz -C /var/www/html

The above will create the following directory which will contain our WordPress script:

/var/www/html/wordpress

Now change the owner of this directory to the "apache" user and set the appropriate permissions:

# chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/wordpress
# chmod -R 775 /var/www/html/wordpress

Then set up an SELinux context for the directory and its contents.

# dnf install policycoreutils-python-utils
# semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t "/var/www/html/wordpress(/.*)?"
# restorecon -Rv /var/www/html/wordpress

Creating an Apache Virtual Host for WordPress

We will create a separate virtual host for our WordPress installation. Open /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf with your favorite text editor:

# vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

And add the following code at the bottom of the file and replace the marked text with information specific to your installation:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wordpress/
ServerName tecminttest.com
ServerAlias www.tecminttest.com 
<Directory "/var/www/html/wordpress">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
Require all granted
</Directory> 
ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/tecminttest_error.log
CustomLog /var/log/httpd/tecminttest_access.log common
</VirtualHost>

Save changes and restart Apache:

# systemctl restart httpd

Installing WordPress on a website

We are now ready to start our WordPress installation. To start the installation, you can access either your server's IP address at either when installing locally you can use either if you're using a real domain you can use a domain instead. You should see the following page:

When you click the "Let's Go" button, you will be redirected to the next installation page, where you will need to enter the database details we created earlier.

Once you've entered your details, click the submit button. WordPress will try to create its own configuration file named wp-config.php. If everything is in order, you should see the following page:

After you click the "Start Installation" button, you will be prompted to enter some details about your website: site name, username, password, and email address.

When you fill in all the required information, complete the installation by clicking the button below. Your installation is now complete. Your homepage should look something like the image below: