Jonathan Bossenger

Over the past few months, I’ve been hosting a few live streams on setting up a VPS web server for hosting WordPress sites with Multisite support. I started with Apache, followed by Nginx. My last live stream will be using OpenLiteSpeed.

For the Apache and Nginx live streams, I had a full tutorial on how to set everything up, Digital Ocean’s LAMP tutorial, and SpinupWP’s server set-up guide. For the OpenLiteSpeed configuration, I couldnt find one place with everything I needed, I had to piece things together from various sources. So, I decided to document everything on my blog in case someone else needs it.

Disclaimer: this is just the basic server configuration, just enough to get WordPress installed and working. I’m not worrying about advanced caching, security, or anything else, so YMMV.

This post is still very rough, I hope to improve it a little over time, but for now it’s really just a note dump.

Notes and resources

Before we get into the steps, here are the various online articles I used to gather bits and pieces from:

• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu – for the initial server set up
• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu – just for the MySQL bits
• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-openlitespeed-mariadb-php-lomp-stack-on-ubuntu-22-04 – for most of the OpenLiteSpeed install
• https://docs.openlitespeed.org/config/ – configuring OpenLiteSpeed
• https://upcloud.com/resources/tutorials/install-wordpress-openlitespeed – for details on how to set up the local site directories
• https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/multisite/create-network/ – the WordPress multisite instructions

Initial server setup

Update software

apt update
apt upgrade -y

Set a hostname

hostnamectl set-hostname psykrotek

Create a new user

adduser jbossenger
usermod -aG sudo jbossenger

Set up a basic firewall

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw status

Test by logging in as the new sudo user

Optional, configure ssh key pair

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "jonathanbossenger@Jonathans-MBP"

Copy the public key

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Create the .ssh directory on the server, and the authorized_keys file

sudo mkdir   ~/.ssh
sudo chmod 700 ~/.ssh
sudo nano ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Paste the public key into the authorized_keys file, and update the permissions

sudo chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Disable password authentication

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Set the following values

PermitRootLogin no
PasswordAuthentication no

Check additional ssh configuration

cd /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d

Restart the ssh service

sudo service ssh restart

Install OpenLiteSpeed, MySQL, and PHP

sudo wget -O - https://repo.litespeed.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt update
sudo apt install openlitespeed

Check that the service is running

sudo systemctl status lsws

Update the firewall to allow access to the web server

sudo ufw allow 7080,80,443,8088/tcp
sudo ufw status

Access the web server

http://your_server_ip:8088

Install MySQL

sudo apt install mysql-server

Update MySQL root password

sudo mysql

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Secure the MySQL installation

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD component? Y
Please enter 0 = LOW, 1 = MEDIUM and 2 = STRONG: 2
Change the password for root ? Y
New password: ************
Remove anonymous users? Y
Disallow root login remotely? Y
Remove test database and access to it? Y
Reload privilege tables now? Y

Update PHP version PHP 8.1 on Ubuntu 22.04 by default

sudo apt install lsphp81 lsphp81-{common,mysql}

Install PHP CLI

sudo apt install php8.1-cli

Configure OpenLiteSpeed admin

sudo /usr/local/lsws/admin/misc/admpass.sh

Browse to the admin interface

https://your_server_ip:7080

https://docs.openlitespeed.org/config/php/#configuration

Server Configuration > External App > Edit

Change Command to lsphp81/bin/lsphp

Graceful restart

Set up a virtual host

https://docs.openlitespeed.org/config/#set-up-virtual-hosts

Create the directories

sudo mkdir /usr/local/lsws/psykrotek
sudo mkdir /usr/local/lsws/psykrotek/{conf,html,logs}

sudo chown -R nobody:nogroup /usr/local/lsws/psykrotek/html
sudo find /usr/local/lsws/psykrotek/html/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
sudo find /usr/local/lsws/psykrotek/html/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;

sudo chown lsadm:lsadm /usr/local/lsws/psykrotek/conf

Configure the vhost in the admin interface

Virtual Hosts > Add

Virtual Host Name = psykrotek
Virtual Host Root = $SERVER_ROOT/psykrotek
Config File = $SERVER_ROOT/conf/vhosts/psykrotek/vhost.conf
Enable Scripts/ExtApps = Yes
Restrained = No

file /usr/local/lsws/conf/vhosts/psykrotek/vhost.conf does not exist. CLICK TO CREATE

Virtual Hosts > psykrotek > General

Document Root = /usr/local/lsws/psykrotek/html
Domain Name = psykrotek.co.za
Domain Aliases = www.psykrotek.co.za, *.psykrotek.co.za

Virtual Hosts > psykrotek > Index Files

index.html, index.php

Enable Rewrite in the Rewrite tab

Enable Rewrite = Yes
Auto Load from .htaccess = yes

Listeners -> Add

Listener Name = HTTP
IP Address = ANY IPv4
Port = 80
Secure = No

Map Virtual Hosts

Listeners > HTTP > Virtual Host Mappings > Add

Virtual Host = psykrotek
Domains = psykrotek.co.za, www.psykrotek.co.za, *.psykrotek.co.za

Graceful restart

Install WordPress

Instal WP-CLI

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar
chmod +x wp-cli.phar
sudo mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp

Create the database

mysql -uroot -p

CREATE DATABASE psykrotek;
CREATE USER 'psykrotek'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'Psykr0tekPassw0rd#!';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON psykrotek.* TO 'psykrotek'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Download WordPress

sudo su 
cd /usr/local/lsws/psykrotek/html
wp core download --allow-root

Set the ownership of the wp-conten directory

chown -R nobody:nogroup wp-content/