It was too easy, so now what?

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That’s actually something I wanted to bring up with someone more knowledgeable than I am…I made WP work by editing config files without knowing exactly what else that would affect.

  1. I installed apache-mariadb-php using the instructions here: https://www.linuxbabe.com/debian/install-lamp-stack-debian-10-buster, including the mysql_secure_installation piece.

  • Before you do this, try taking a snapshot of the /etc/apache2/ directory. The install disables some of the configs and vhosts, causing FBX to lose functionality. So make sure you know what’s already configured.

  • After the install, check /etc/apache2/sites-enabled, mods-enabled, and confs-enabled to ensure that everything that was there before is still there. If not, use sudo a2ensite, a2enmod, and a2enconf to make it match.

  • Before restarting Apache, edit the default vhost site config (000-default.conf) and point the document root directive to your wordpress directory. Here is my working VirtualHost *:80 config:

     ServerName www.meetingvite.com

 ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
 DocumentRoot /var/www/html
 DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

 <Directory "/var/www/html">
         Options FollowSymlinks
         AllowOverride All
 </Directory>
  1. Edit the file /etc/apache2/conf-available/freedombox-apache-homepage.conf and comment out the first line, RedirectMatch "^/$" "/index.html" with two hashtags like this: ## RedirectMatch "^/$" "/index.html". You have to comment it instead of using a2disconf on the whole config or FBX fixes itself and makes /plinth your default site.
  2. Now restart apache with sudo systemctl apache2 reload.
  3. It’s super helpful to change the owner/group of the WP html directory and its contents to www-data. WP will help you add and edit files in your installation if it has filesystem access with write permissions.
  4. You’ll need to install the Apache library for Certbot and get a cert using the command line. I found instructions on the EFF site, but they only work if you change the python version to 3 like this:
    sudo apt-get install certbot python3-certbot-apache
  • Then run:
    sudo certbot --apache
    and it will pick up your new domain as a candidate for requesting a certificate. You can’t use the built-in Certbot UI from FBX.
  • This also creates the apache2 site conf file for port 443.

I’ve pulled these directions from my notes, so I may have left out some minor details. Let me know if you run into any trouble. Configuring WP to run in just about any server setup is my thing, so I’m sure I can help.