Getting Started with WordPress WP-CLI and Nginx on Ubuntu 22.04

Wordpress is the most widely used open-source content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MYSQL. WordPress is installed on more than 60 million websites. There are plenty of ready-to-use themes and plugins available for WordPress. You can use WordPress as your blogging platform, as an e-commerce site (with WooCommerce) or as a CMS system for your company website. Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little released the first WordPress version on May 27, 2003, under a GPLv2 license.

WP-CLI is a command line tool that provides a command line interface to manage your WordPress site. From zero to Hero, you can use it to create your WordPress site, manage the WP database, alter the site description, install and manage themes and plugins etc. This is very cool stuff that can save you a lot of time. You can update plugins, setup multisite installations and much more without having to log in to WordPress in a web browser. You can do it all from the shell terminal/SSH.

Prerequisites

I'll use Ubuntu 22.04 here
Root privileges

What is covered in this tutorial?

Install and configure a basic LEMP (Linux, Nginx, MySQL, PHP) server.
Installation of WP-CLI
Install WordPress with WP-CLI
WP-CLI Commands explained

Installation and Configuration of a LEMP Server (Linux, Nginx, MySQL, PHP)

In this tutorial, I will use Nginx as web server, MySQL as the database system and PHP-FPM to run WordPress. Nginx is one of the fastest web servers, it provides a high performance with low memory usage.

So let's get started, first install all packages with one "apt-get" command:

sudo apt install nginx mysql-server mysql-client php8.1 php8.1-fpm php8.1-mysql vim

NOTE: You will be prompted for the MySQL password. Please enter a secure password for the MySQL root user and remember that password. We need it again later

Now edit the php.ini file in the directory "/etc/php/8.1/fpm/".

cd /etc/php/8.1/fpm/
sudo nano php.ini

Please uncomment on line 773 "cgi.fix_pathinfo" and change the value to 0:

cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

Save and exit.

Now configure Nginx to use PHP-FPM. Please go to the directory "/etc/nginx/sites-available/" and create a new file for the virtual host configuration.

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/
sudo nano wpcli.co

Paste the configuration below:

server {
    listen 80;

    #Web Directory
    root /home/vagrant/wordpress;

    index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

    server_name wpcli.co;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
    }

    #include h5bp/basic.conf;

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

Replace "wpcli.co" in the server_name setting with the domain name that your WordPress installation shall use.

Now activate the virtualhost by creating a symlink to the file wpcli.co in the directory "/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/" :

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/wpcli.co /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/wpcli.co

Then create a new directory with the name "/home/vagrant/wordpress/" and create a new file to test the PHP installation with phpinfo(). I will use a user named "vagrant" here, so "cd ~" is the same than "cd /home/vagrant":

cd ~
mkdir -p /home/vagrant/wordpress
echo "<?php phpinfo(); ?>" > wordpress/index.php

Restart the nginx web server and php-fpm:

sudo service nginx restart
sudo service php8.1-fpm restart

Test the PHP and Nginx installation by visiting the site "http://wpcli.co/" in a browser. Replace wpcli.co with the domain name of your website/server.

Install WP-CLI

To install wp-cli, you have to download the .phar file (.phar is PHP archive format similar to .jar for java) from GitHub with the curl or wget command, I will use curl here:

cd /tmp
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar

Make the wp-cli.phar file executable:

chmod +x wp-cli.phar

And move it to the bin directory, the command renames wp-cli.phar to "wp" for easier usage:

sudo mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp

Now test the wp-cli with command:

wp --info

You can see here that I'm using PHP 8.1

Basic WP-CLI Commands

Until this step we have:

A running LEMP (Nginx, MySQL and PHP) installation.
A VirtualHost with domain wpcli.co (or the domain name you chose for your site).
A Web Directory in "/home/vagrant/wordpress/".
The WP-CLI command installed.

We will install WordPress with the domain "wpcli.co" in the directory "/home/vagrant/wordpress/". We will do this with WP-CLI.

1. Install Wordpress and Configure the Database

Please go to the web directory:

cd /home/vagrant/wordpress/

Download WordPress by using wp-cli, you can download a different WordPress version, I will use the version 6.1.1 here:

wp core download --version=6.1.1

If you want to use a different version, change the version number.

Next, Create the database for WordPress through the MySQL shell. Please connect to the MySQL server with the following command:

sudo mysql -u root -p
ENTER YOUR PASSWORD

Once you have been logged into MySQL, create a new user and database:

create database wordpressdb;
create user iamuser@localhost identified by 'iamuser@';
grant all privileges on wordpressdb.* to iamuser@localhost identified by 'iamuser@';
flush privileges;
\q

I've created a new database with the name "wordpressdb", a new user "iamuser", and I've granted access to the user to the database.

The database has been created, now I'll create a "wp-config.php" file with the database credentials of the MySQL user that we added above.

wp core config --dbname=wordpressdb --dbuser=iamuser --dbpass=iamuser@

When you see this line, then the file has been created successfully.

Success: Generated wp-config.php file.

The options explained:

--dbname = Database name
--dbuser = User that granted to the database
--dbpass = Database password

Now it's time to install WordPress with the command "wp core install", the command requires these parameters:

--url: Your domain name. wpcli.co
--title: Title of your site.
--admin_user: Admin username you use to log in to WordPress.
--admin_password: Password for admin user
--admin_email: Your email address to get noticed for any site-related issue.

Let's do it:

wp core install --url=wpcli.co --title=WP-CLI\ \Tutorials --admin_user=admin --admin_password=aqwe123 [email protected]

The command results in:

Success: WordPress installed successfully.

Now visit your domain name: wpcli.co with the web browser again.

(If you want to test the admin, please go to wpcli.co/wp-login.php instead).

NOTE:

If you get an error message like "sh: 1: /usr/sbin/sendmail: not found", please install "sendmail" with this apt command:

sudo apt-get install sendmail

2. Managing Wordpress Themes with WP-CLI

Search for available WordPress themes:

wp theme search KEYWORD-THEME

Install a WordPress theme, in this case, the theme with the name "MyKnowledgeBase":

wp theme install MyKnowledgeBase

Once the theme is installed, activate it:

wp theme activate myknowledgebase

Gest a list of all installed themes:

wp theme list

3. Manage Wordpress Plugins with WP-CLI

Search for plugins:

wp plugin search KEYWORD

Install plugins:

wp plugin install PLUGINNAME

Activate a plugins:

wp plugin activate PLUGINNAME

See all installed plugins:

wp plugin list

Get the status of the plugin, Active or Inactive:

wp plugin status

4. Manage the WordPress Database

Connect to the MySQL shell by using the WordPress credentials:

wp db cli

Show all tables in the WordPress database:

wp db tables

Export the WordPress database to a .sql file. This is very useful for backups:

wp db export databasename.sql

Import a WordPress database:

wp db import databasename.sql

Execute a MySQL Query under the WordPress MySQL user:

wp db query "MySQL Query"

5. Other Commands

WP-CLI has many more commands and options. You can use "wp --help" to see all commands. There are commands to manage WordPress users, user roles, posts, the menu, widgets etc.

Conclusion

WordPress is a popular CMS and blogging platform used on millions of websites. There are many free and commercial WordPress plugins and themes available. WP-CLI is a set of commands to manage your WordPress site. It is very useful and easy to use. You can build and manage your WordPress site directly on the shell without logging into WordPress in the browser.

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