Background context I installed a basic WordPress site from scratch on Ubuntu. I was amazed at the amount of “tweaking” that I needed to do to get something functional, and this got me thinking there has to be a better way to do this.
How do people script their installs to be more consistent and hands-off? I get there are a bunch of parameters one needs to provide for credentials, domain names etc, but this seems like something very solvable by Ansible etc?
Any suggestions for something that I can rinse and repeat without having to reinvent the wheel?
Edit: I am looking for self-hosted WordPress (ie NOT [Wordpress.org]) etc) and preferably Ubuntu centric (thats just want I have been using). Not looking for signing up for WordPress hosting with a hosting company.
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Many thanks in advance!
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Are you talking about a server you have running at home?
Typically most people that do their “own” hosting use a service like AWS, Digital Ocean or Linode that have pre-baked setups (DO calls them Droplets) that let you spin up a VPS, or a site on a server at the click of a button. I also use RunCloud – they have their own Ubuntu distro, and a UI to spin up new sites. I got sick of doing it manually. I have a few dozen servers on Linode and AWS. Some servers have 20+ sites on them, some only have one. Regardless, I haven’t had to set up my own server for several years – there’s so much choice these days.
edit: the above is called self-hosting. Hosting in your own home is not recommended. “Self-hosting” means any WP website that isn’t on WordPress.com.
My advice: learn Apache (or whatever web server you use) deeply.
The problem isn’t WordPress, the problem is that web servers are complicated. And a fair amount of Linux distros have sort of a predefined setup that they use when you install using whatever package management system they have. That predefined setup isn’t always the best.
It’s like setting up email. The very simplistic built in methods of sending and receiving email works, and it’s almost always absolutely the wrong way to do it. There is a reason that administering servers is an actual job. The devil is in the details.