This is not intended to be a complete HOWTO for Linux (Raspbian), Apache2, PHP, MySQL and WordPress on a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB. What it is supposed to be is a guide that demonstrates that it is easy to get LAMP + WordPress going on a Pi with some links to the documentation that I used.
Assuming you’ve got your Pi and possibly some external storage it’s important to plan out what you’re trying to accomplish and how you want to go about it.
So, I had a 4GB Pi4 as well as a Sandisk Extreme external SSD. First step was to get the latest Raspbian (Buster) in an SD card and booting. Once that was accomplished I installed Apache2 and got that working properly. MySQL / MariaDB was the next cab off the rank followed by PHP and php-mysql.
After each step it’s a damn good idea to make good and sure that what you’ve just installed works properly.
Downloading and installing WordPress was quite possibly the easiest part of the whole process.
For each of the LAMP components there is a heap of available documentation available – remember that Google is your friend. The Raspberry Pi Forums are a brilliant resource. The MariaDB documentation is comprehensive to say the least as is the PHP documentation. There is more WordPress documentation than any mortal could ever want.
So, the steps I followed were :-
- Get Raspbian working.
- Download, install and get Apache2 working.
- If you are going to get SSL working this is when you’d do. I decided not to and just skipped it.
- Download and get MariaDB installed and working.
- Get PHP and php-mysql downloaded, installed and working.
- Get the latest version of WordPress downloaded and installed.
- In MySQL reate the WordPress user and the WordPress database.
- Set up the privileges for the user.
- Configuring WordPress is pretty trivial IF you follow the WordPress procedures.
This is a much more complete HOWTO.
Once I got it all working I set about getting all my stuff over from an ISP’s server. Lots of copying and pasting is all it took.
Once I got it all over I started messing around with WordPress themes and layouts. The choices are bewildering and the theme and layout of this site is a “first attempt mess” which I’ll refine as I work out what I want and how to get there.
At this point I decided that a 32GB SD card probably wouldn’t be enough so I decided to press a Sandisk Extreme 500GB SSD into service. I found a great HOWTO on the Raspberry Pi Forums and it worked first time. I’ll put that procedure into another post.