WordPress Manual Installation: Full Guide for Setting Up on a VDS

Want to install WordPress on your VDS from scratch without Plesk/cPanel? This guide covers Ubuntu 22.04 LAMP/LEMP stack prep, placing WordPress files, creating a MySQL database, and security steps.

Prerequisites

• 2 vCPU + 2 GB RAM VDS (entry-level for WordPress)
• Ubuntu 22.04 / Debian 12
• Root access (sudo)
• Domain’s DNS A record points to VDS IP

1. Update the system

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

2. Install LAMP stack (Apache + MySQL + PHP)

For LEMP (Nginx), see our Nginx post.

sudo apt install apache2 mysql-server -y

# PHP 8.3 + WordPress required modules
sudo apt install php8.3 php8.3-fpm php8.3-mysql php8.3-curl php8.3-gd \
    php8.3-mbstring php8.3-xml php8.3-zip php8.3-imagick libapache2-mod-php8.3 -y

sudo systemctl enable --now apache2 mysql

3. Secure MySQL

sudo mysql_secure_installation

• Set root password
• Anonymous users → Yes (delete)
• Remote root login → Yes (block)
• Test database → Yes (delete)

For detailed MySQL ops, see our MariaDB/MySQL post.

4. Create database for WordPress

sudo mysql -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE wordpress_db CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'wp_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'STRONG_PASSWORD_HERE';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress_db.* TO 'wp_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

5. Download WordPress

cd /tmp
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xzf latest.tar.gz
sudo mv wordpress /var/www/yoursite.com

For multi-site, use separate folders like /var/www/site2.com.

6. Set file permissions

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/yoursite.com
sudo find /var/www/yoursite.com -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/yoursite.com -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Write access for wp-content/uploads:

sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/yoursite.com/wp-content

7. Configure Apache vhost

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/yoursite.com.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName yoursite.com
    ServerAlias www.yoursite.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/yoursite.com

    <Directory /var/www/yoursite.com>
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/yoursite.com_error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/yoursite.com_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2ensite yoursite.com.conf
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo systemctl reload apache2

8. Configure wp-config.php

cd /var/www/yoursite.com
sudo cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php
sudo nano wp-config.php

Edit:

define( 'DB_NAME', 'wordpress_db' );
define( 'DB_USER', 'wp_user' );
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'STRONG_PASSWORD_HERE' );
define( 'DB_HOST', 'localhost' );

For authentication keys: https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ → copy the output, paste into the matching section in wp-config.php.

9. Install SSL

Mandatory — see our Let’s Encrypt post:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache -y
sudo certbot --apache -d yoursite.com -d www.yoursite.com

10. Finish install in browser

Open https://yoursite.com:

• Pick language → Continue
• Site Title, admin Username, Password, Email → Install WordPress

WordPress is ready in 5 seconds.

Post-install security

1. Don’t use “admin” as username (default brute-force target)
2. Restrict wp-admin via firewall — only your IP (UFW post)
3. Disable XML-RPC — WP becomes a DDoS attack vehicle
4. Install 2FA plugin: Wordfence Login Security
5. Enable auto-updates: wp-config.php → define('WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', 'minor');
6. Cron-based backups: without Plesk, write your own (cron post)

Performance tuning

• Enable OPcache: php.ini → opcache.enable=1
• Object cache: install Redis, connect via redis-cli
• Cache plugin: WP Rocket / LiteSpeed Cache
• CDN: Cloudflare post

For detailed performance, see our WordPress Hosting post.

Common errors

• “Error establishing database connection”: wrong DB info in wp-config.php or MySQL service down
• 404 Not Found (permalinks): mod_rewrite not enabled → sudo a2enmod rewrite
• White screen of death: PHP error → tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log
• “Allowed memory size exhausted”: in wp-config.php add define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');
• Image upload failure: wp-content/uploads permissions wrong

Conclusion

Manual install is a 20-minute task but gives full control — Plesk needs an extra license; manual is free. Production WordPress with manual install + nginx-proxy + Let’s Encrypt + Cloudflare = the fastest stack.

KavesNET VDS plans are NVMe-SSD optimized for WordPress.

Related: WordPress Hosting Guide · MySQL/MariaDB Management