Install WordPress on an Ubuntu VPS with Nginx and MariaDB

WordPress runs millions of sites and most of them are slow because someone clicked "1-click install" on a shared host. A VPS with a hand-rolled stack is faster, cheaper at scale, and yours to tune. Here's the install that actually holds up.

The stack

• Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• Nginx as the web server
• PHP 8.3 FPM
• MariaDB 11
• Let's Encrypt via Certbot

Run a baseline server hardening first (see the initial setup guide) before continuing.

Install the packages

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nginx mariadb-server php8.3-fpm php8.3-mysql \
  php8.3-curl php8.3-gd php8.3-intl php8.3-mbstring php8.3-xml \
  php8.3-zip php8.3-imagick unzip

Verify each service is running:

systemctl status nginx mariadb php8.3-fpm

Database setup

Lock down MariaDB first:

sudo mariadb-secure-installation

Answer "yes" to everything except switching to unix_socket auth (your call). Then create the WordPress database and user:

sudo mariadb <<'SQL'
CREATE DATABASE wordpress CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'wp'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'pick-a-strong-password';
GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO 'wp'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
SQL

Drop in WordPress

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com
cd /tmp && curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
sudo tar xf latest.tar.gz -C /var/www/example.com --strip-components=1
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/example.com

Nginx server block

Create /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com:

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;
    root /var/www/example.com;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht { deny all; }
    client_max_body_size 64m;
}

Enable and reload:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

HTTPS via Certbot

DNS must point at your VPS first. Then:

sudo snap install --classic certbot
sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot
sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com

See the Nginx + Let's Encrypt guide for hardening the TLS config to A+.

Finish in the browser

Visit https://example.com. WordPress's installer prompts for the database details you created above. Five minutes of clicking and you have a site.

Tuning that actually matters

• PHP OPcache is on by default in PHP 8.3. Verify with php8.3 -i | grep opcache.enable.
• Object cache Install Redis (apt install redis-server) and the Redis Object Cache plugin. Massive admin-side speedup.
• Page cache WP Super Cache or LiteSpeed Cache (yes it works on Nginx) to serve static HTML where possible.
• No plugin diet. Most slow WordPress sites are slow because of plugins, not hosting. Audit before you scale up the VPS.

That's a working WordPress install. Hand-tuned, repeatable, and roughly 1/10 the price of "managed WordPress" hosting once you can read an Nginx log.