Setting Up WordPress Multisite on Ubuntu 24.04 with OpenLiteSpeed (Part 2)

Welcome back! In this continuation of our series, we’ll walk through installing WordPress on a server where OpenLiteSpeed, your database server (MySQL/MariaDB), and PHP are already up and running.

If you missed the previous installment where we set up the LEMP stack and configured the database, be sure to check out [Setting Up WordPress Multisite on Ubuntu 24.04 with OpenLiteSpeed (Part 1)].

Let’s dive into the installation process.

Step 1: Download and Install WordPress

First, we need to download the latest version of WordPress and place it in the OpenLiteSpeed default document root.

Navigate to the Installation Directory

Open your terminal and move to the OpenLiteSpeed installation directory:

cd /usr/local/lsws/

Create a new directory named wordpress and navigate into it:

mkdir wordpress
cd wordpress

Download and Extract WordPress

Download the latest WordPress package directly from the official source:

wget https://wordpress.org/latest.zip

Once the download completes, unzip the archive:

unzip latest.zip

This will extract the files into a subdirectory: /usr/local/lsws/wordpress/wordpress. To simplify the path, let’s rename the inner wordpress folder to html:

mv wordpress html

Your final structure should look like this: /usr/local/lsws/wordpress/html.

Set Correct Permissions

For security and proper functionality, assign the correct ownership to the WordPress files. We’ll set the owner to nobody and the group to nogroup (standard for OpenLiteSpeed):

chown -R nobody:nogroup /usr/local/lsws/wordpress

Configure the Database Connection

Now, let’s configure WordPress to connect to your database. Navigate to the HTML directory:

cd /usr/local/lsws/wordpress/html/

Rename the sample configuration file to activate it:

mv wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Open the file using your preferred text editor (we’ll use nano here):

nano wp-config.php

Locate the database configuration section and update the values with the credentials you created in Step 4 of Part 1:

/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wpdatabase');

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

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'StrongPasswordHere'); // Replace with your actual password

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Save your changes (Ctrl+O, then Enter) and exit the editor (Ctrl+X).

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Step 2: Configure OpenLiteSpeed

With WordPress files in place, we now need to tell OpenLiteSpeed how to serve them.

Create the Virtual Host Configuration Directory

Navigate to the OpenLiteSpeed virtual hosts configuration folder:

cd /usr/local/lsws/conf/vhosts/

Create a new directory for your WordPress site:

mkdir wordpress

Copy the Base Configuration

To save time, we’ll copy the existing configuration from the default “Example” virtual host as a template:

sudo cp /usr/local/lsws/conf/vhosts/Example/vhconf.conf /usr/local/lsws/conf/vhosts/wordpress/vhconf.conf

Ensure the new directory has the correct permissions for the LiteSpeed admin user:

chown -R lsadm:nogroup /usr/local/lsws/conf/vhosts/wordpress/

Configure via the Web Admin Console

While we’ve set up the file structure, the easiest way to finalize the virtual host settings is through the OpenLiteSpeed Web Admin Console.

1. Log in to your OpenLiteSpeed dashboard.
2. Navigate to Virtual Hosts > Add.
3. Enter wordpress as the name and configure the settings to match your directory structure (Root Directory should point to /usr/local/lsws/wordpress/html). Click Save.

Update Index Files

Next, ensure PHP files are recognized as index files:

1. Click on the newly created wordpress virtual host to edit it.
2. Go to the General tab.
3. In the Index Files field, add index.php to the list (e.g., index.php, index.html).
4. Click Save.

Map the Virtual Host to a Listener

Finally, map the virtual host to a listener so it’s accessible via the web:

1. Navigate to Listeners in the left-hand menu.
2. Click View next to your active listener (usually port 80 or 443).
3. Under Virtual Host Mappings, click View.
4. Set the Virtual Host to wordpress and the Domain to * (or your specific domain name).
5. Click Save.

4. Restart OpenLiteSpeed

Apply all changes by restarting the OpenLiteSpeed service:

/usr/local/lsws/bin/lswsctrl restart

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Verify Your Installation

Open your web browser and navigate to your server’s IP address (or domain name). If everything is configured correctly, you should see the famous WordPress installation screen with the “W” logo.

Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the WordPress setup (creating your admin account, site title, etc.).

🎉 Congratulations! You have successfully installed WordPress on OpenLiteSpeed.

Stay tuned for the next article in this series, where we’ll tackle configuring WordPress Multisite to manage multiple websites from a single installation.