Varnish as a frontend for a remote WordPress install - Part 1

Varnish as a frontend for a remote WordPress install – Part 1

This tutorial assumes two sites, varnish.chris.example.com and web.chris.example.com. Both of my test sites will be created on DigitalOcean but on separate instances. Both will be running basic Ubuntu 14.04.

On web.chris.example.com

Install Nginx

Add the dev repo so that we can get to 1.7.x:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:nginx/development
sudo apt-get update

Verify that we’ll get 1.7.x (check the version number returned, currently 1.7.5 as of this posting. If you see 1.4.6 you probably didn’t run apt-get update above)
```
sudo apt-get -s install nginx
```
Install Nginx
```
sudo apt-get install nginx
```
Verify that it was installed
```
nginx -v
```

Install and configure PHP-FPM

Install PHP-FPM
sudo apt-get install php5-fpm
Tweak PHP-FMP for security:
```
sudo vi /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini
```

Look for ;cgi.fix_pathinfo=1 and change it to cgi.fix_pathinfo=0

Restart PHP-FPM

sudo service php5-fpm restart

Create a directory for our web files:

sudo mkdir /var/www

Configure Nginx

Edit the default site for Nginx (or whatever site you want to work on)
```
sudo vi /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
```

Erase and change to

server {
    listen 80 default_server;

    root /var/www;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

}

Test Nginx:
```
sudo nginx -t
```
Restart Nginx
```
sudo service nginx restart
```

Create a quick test file

echo "<?php phpinfo();" | sudo tee /var/www/index.php

Use a web browser to confirm that PHP is running
Remove the test file
sudo rm /var/www/index.php

Install and configure mysql

Install

sudo apt-get install mysql-server php5-mysql

Configure

sudo mysql_install_db
sudo mysql_secure_installation

Install exim for email (optional)

sudo apt-get install exim4
sudo dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config

Install WP-CLI

Install PHP CLI
sudo apt-get install php5-cli

Download

cd ~
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar

Test
```
php wp-cli.phar --info
```

Make it executable
```
chmod +x wp-cli.phar
```

Make it available everywhere as just the command wp

sudo mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp
Confirm it works

wp --info

Install WordPress via WP-CLI (optional, you can do it any way you want)

Download WordPress
```
cd /var/www
wp core download
```
Create a MySql database and user, replace the testXYZ parts as needed
mysql -uroot -p -e “CREATE DATABASE testdb; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON testdb.* TO testuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘testpassword’; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;”

Create a config file (replace variable below obviously)

wp core config --dbname=testdb --dbuser=testuser --dbpass=testpassword

Generate some sample content

wp post generate –count=10000

Notes

Nginx runs as user and group www-data by default. For most of my installs I usually add my non-root account to the www-data group and also make that my default group
sudo usermod -a -G www-data myaccounthere
sudo usermod -g www-data myaccounthere