Installing LAMP on Debian / Ubuntu

LAMP is the classic open-source stack for hosting web applications. The name breaks down into four components:

• Linux — the operating system
• Apache — the web server
• MariaDB / MySQL — the database system
• PHP — the server-side scripting language

Important: don't install LAMP components manually on servers that already have a control panel (cPanel, Hestia, etc.) — it will likely cause conflicts and could result in data loss.

Update the package index

apt-get update

Install Apache

apt-get install apache2

Install MySQL

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

During installation, you'll be prompted to set a root password for MySQL. Pick something strong — this is the first line of defence for your database.

Install PHP

apt-get install php5 php5-mysql

This installs PHP, a base set of extensions, and the libapache2-mod-php5 Apache module so PHP works out of the box with your web server.

Setting up virtual hosts

If you're hosting more than one site on this server, each one needs its own VirtualHost configuration.

On Debian/Ubuntu, site configs live in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/. Name the file after the domain to keep things organised:

touch /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/mysite.com

Open the file in a text editor and add the following:

<VirtualHost 111.111.111.111:80>
    ServerName mysite.com
    ServerAlias www.mysite.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/sites/mysite.com
    CustomLog /var/www/httpd-logs/mysite.com.access.log combined
    ErrorLog /var/www/httpd-logs/mysite.com.error.log
    AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
</VirtualHost>

• Replace 111.111.111.111 with your server's actual IP address
• Replace mysite.com with your domain name

Creating a database

Connect to MySQL:

mysql -u root -p

Create a database and grant a dedicated user access to it:

create database db;
grant all privileges on db.* to 'user'@'localhost' identified by 'password';

• db — your database name
• user — the database username
• password — the user's password

Creating site directories and installing a CMS

Set up the directories for your site files and logs:

mkdir /var/www/sites/
mkdir /var/www/sites/mysite.com
mkdir /var/www/httpd-logs
touch /var/www/httpd-logs/mysite.com.access.log
touch /var/www/httpd-logs/mysite.com.error.log

Navigate to your site directory and download your CMS — here's WordPress as an example:

cd /var/www/sites/mysite.com
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.zip
unzip latest.zip

If your domain's DNS is already pointing to this server, open the site in a browser using your domain name to continue the installation. If not, use your server's IP address in the meantime.