Need to install WordPress with the One-Click Install on DigitalOcean?

This guide is for you.

DigitalOcean is changing the face of cloud hosting – one droplet at a time. It is one of the best cloud hosting providers for WordPress websites. Its developer-friendly cloud infrastructure provides everything you need to scale your website with ease.
Here at Ibmi Media, as part of our Server Management Services, we regularly help our Customers to deploy applications on Ubuntu 20.04 Droplet.
In this context, we shall look into the steps to install WordPress on DigitalOcean.

Steps for WordPress One-Click Install on DigitalOcean

Here, we will set up a WordPress site using the WordPress One-Click Application on DigitalOcean.
Also, we are using an Ubuntu 20.04 Droplet.

1. Creating A WordPress Droplet
i. To create a WordPress Droplet from the 1-Click App page, press the Create WordPress Droplet button:
ii. Next, we need to choose an image. If not already set, we will switch from the Distributions tab to the Marketplace tab.
iii. From there, WordPress 5.5.1 on Ubuntu 20.04 will be set automatically. If not, we can click “WordPress 5.5.1 on Ubuntu 20.04” to set it as the image.
iv. Once the image is highlighted, we can accept the defaults or adjust settings according to the use case.

The following changes can be made:
a. Choose a plan:
b. Choose the size. We must keep in mind that WordPress One-Click Droplets require 1GB of RAM or more.
c. Add block storage.
d. Add this to our droplet based on our use case.
e.Choose a datacenter region.
f. Select additional options.
g. Choose a hostname. We can make it easier to identify the Droplet by naming it “WordPress,”  as we are installing WordPress.

v. After making the necessary changes, click Create Droplet and we will get an address for the Droplet.
vi. Click the address to copy it to the clipboard so that we can use this to view the WordPress site.

2. Checking the Placeholder Page
Open a web browser and paste the Droplet's IP address to visit the new site.
Until we log in with SSH, the following page will appear:

....

Please log into your Droplet with SSH to configure the WordPress installation.

See the WordPress One-Clickstart guide for detailed assistance.

....

We can safely leave the installation in this state until we are ready to configure WordPress.

3. Accessing the Droplet via SSH to Enable Configuration
i. First, we need to connect to the Droplet via SSH to remove the placeholder web page.
ii. After entering the Droplet via SSH we need to complete the WordPress configuration properly or else anyone who finds the site could create the administrative user and password for it.

$ ssh root@droplet.ip.address

iii. Next, we can set an administrative password and configure WordPress.
We will be prompted to enter administrative details on the terminal after logging in via SSH. We can follow the terminal instructions to complete the WordPress setup.

[Need Assistance to develop your WordPress Website? We are happy to help you!]

4. Configuring WordPress
After completing the WordPress installation we can visit the Droplet’s IP address in a web browser. We will see the Language Selection page where you can select your language which will be used in the administration of your WordPress website.
Then, Select the language, provide the site a name, and configure its administrative user.

After completing the initial configuration, we can log in as the administrative user and continue to set up the site.

5. Configuring a Domain
To use a domain name instead of the IP address of Droplet, we need to set up a hostname with DigitalOcean or set up a domain name with the DNS provider.
i. Once it resolves using DNS, we can update the WordPress configuration to use the domain.
ii. Then log in to the WordPress admin panel at http://DROPLETIPADDRESS/wp-admin using the admin login credentials.
iii. And click on General under Settings. We will see several options for configuring the website.
iv. After that update the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) fields to reflect our new domain name and click Save Changes.
We can customize our site’s appearance, install plugins for added functionality, or create a new post or a page.

6. Locating Logins and Passwords
Additional details of installation are provided in the MOTD (Message of the Day) which is displayed when we log into Droplet via SSH:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to DigitalOcean's One-Click WordPress Droplet.
To keep this Droplet secure, the UFW firewall is enabled.
All ports are BLOCKED except 22 (SSH), 80 (HTTP), and 443 (HTTPS).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To access MySQL database server, we can use the following command to find MySQL root user password from /root/.digitalocean_password file:

$ cat /root/.digitalocean_password

The Output will be shown as given below:

root_mysql_pass="c404aed5e912278adb4EXAMPLE9782f390286d706a9c4f72"

wordpress_mysql_pass="619863e454cEXAMPLE15be13d9730db5c0a52ad6a4d2491a"

After that copy the password from root_mysql_pass.
Next, run the following command with the -u flag to specify a user (root) and the -p flag to be prompted for the password as follows:

mysql -u root -p

We will be able to login using the password we got from the /root/.digitalocean_password file.

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