WordPress is the most popular self-hosted content management system (CMS) today. Between native features and hundreds of third party plugins, WordPress can handle virtually anything from digital portfolios to small business management suites.
CyberPanel offers a paid plugin to install WordPress on CyberPanel and manage settings within the dashboard. However, the CyberPanel WordPress installer is free and included with the base application.
Below we’re going to cover multiple ways to deploy WordPress on a CyberPanel VPS for free and other ways to manage your websites.
CyberPanel WordPress Application Installer
This is the fastest option for installing WordPress on a CyberPanel server. This quick-installation method also installs the LiteSpeed Cache WordPress plugin for integration with CyberPanel’s web server configuration.
- Log into CyberPanel.
- On the left, select Websites > Create Website.
- Specify the feature package, CyberPanel user to manage the site, domain (without “www”), email account
- Choose the latest PHP version unless you know an important plugin for your needs requires an older version.
- Enable additional features as desired such as SSL certificate creation if configured on your server.
- Select Create Website at the bottom. This may take a few minutes.
- On the left, select Websites > List Websites.
- Select Manage on the right-side of the website domain.
- At the bottom, select WP + LSCache.
- Set the site title, admin username, password, and email account.
- Leave the path as is unless you want to install the site in a subdirectory within the user home directory.
- Select Install Now.
WordPress CyberPanel Integration
The generated database name and user will be a combination of alphanumeric characters. You can modify the database data, user password, and user access from CyberPanel and natively installed phpMyAdmin.
To confirm which database belongs to which WordPress site:
- From CyberPanel, select Databases > phpMyAdmin.
- Select a database on the left-side with over a dozen alphanumeric characters.
- Select the wp_options table.
- Check the “siteurl” and “home” rows to determine which WordPress site manages that database.
Continue learning about WordPress below.
Manually Install WordPress on CyberPanel
This section guides you through manually preparing your server for WordPress, downloading the CMS onto your server, and basic installation.
- Log into CyberPanel.
- Create a user to manage the new WordPress site if necessary.
- On the left, select Websites > Create Website.
- Specify the feature package, CyberPanel user to manage the site, domain (without “www”), and email account
- Choose the latest PHP version unless you know an important plugin for your needs requires an older version.
- Enable additional features as desired such as SSL certificate creation if configured on your server.
- Select Create Website. This may take a few minutes.
- From the sidebar, select Databases > Create Database.
- Select the WordPress domain from the drop-down list.
- Type a database name suffix. The full database name will automatically populate on the right.
- Create a user name. The full database user name will show on the right.
- Type a strong passphrase and save it in a password manager. You’ll need this later.
- Select Create Database.
Continue to download WordPress via file manager or Secure Shell (SSH).
Install with CyberPanel File Manager
This subsection sticks to the graphical interface for users who do not want to use the terminal.
- Select Websites > List Websites.
- Select File Manager on the right-side of the website.
- Double-click on public_html.
- Right-click on the default index.html file and delete it.
- Download WordPress to your PC from https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz.
- Select Upload at the top.
- Browse for and select the WordPress tar.gz file you downloaded.
- Select Upload.
- Exit the pop-up window from the upper-right corner.
- Right-click on the tar.gz file and select Extract.
- The extraction file path doesn’t matter since you’ll need to move the files from the created directory. Select Extract.
- Double-click on the wordpress directory.
- At the top, click Select All and Move.
- The “Move to” file path should state “/home/YOURDOMAIN/public_html” with no slash at the end.
- Select Back at the top.
- The public_html directory should now list all WordPress files. Delete the empty wordpress directory and tar.gz file. If the wordpress directory isn’t removed, you’ll need to use SSH or FTP until the bug is resolved by CyberPanel developers.
- Start the WordPress setup configuration.
Install WordPress with SSH
This subsection covers using the command-line interface (CLI) for those with SSH access.
- Log into SSH.
- Navigate to the new user’s public root directory, replacing “YOURDOMAIN” with the WordPress domain:
cd /home/YOURDOMAIN/public_html/
- Remove the default index.html file:
rm index.html
- Download the latest version of WordPress:
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
- Extract the tar file:
tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz
- Move all the files from the new wordpress directory to the current directory:
mv wordpress/* ./
- Remove the now empty wordpress directory and tar file:
rm -rf wordpress latest.tar.gz
- Start the WordPress setup configuration.
Set up WordPress
You’re almost done. Now you just need to finish the WordPress setup wizard.
- Visit your WordPress domain in a web browser.
- The first page may show the WordPress logo and available languages. Select your primary language and continue.You may start at this page which lists the info you’ll need to continue. Continue.
- Type the database name, database user, and database user password. This data is available in CyberPanel Databases > List Databases. Select Submit.
- Run the installation.
- Add a site title, admin username, password, and email account. Discourage search engines from indexing the site if this isn’t meant to be a public site. Install WordPress.
- The success page will show your admin user. Log in.
User credentials will be emailed to you.
Get Started with WordPress
Here are some recommended WordPress plugins to get you started:
- LiteSpeed Cache for integration with your CyberPanel web server
- WordPress security plugins
- A WordPress backup plugin
- WP Maintenance Mode
- All in One SEO for search engine optimization (SEO)
Manage WordPress Data
There are multiple methods for you to manage your website outside of the WordPress dashboard:
- WP-CLI, an application for managing WordPress from SSH.
- CyberPanel file manager and phpMyAdmin integration, both covered above
- WordPress plugins with remote access like Cerber Security
Learn to do more with your website from our WordPress Education Channel.
With our Cloud Server Hosting, you can deploy a lightning-fast, reliable cloud platform with built-in redundancy – ensuring the availability of your environment!