Installing Caddy Server

Caddy is available in the Ubuntu repository and can be installed directly:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install caddy

Setting Up PHP and MySQL

WordPress requires PHP and MySQL to function. Install the necessary packages:

sudo apt install php php-fpm php-mysql mysql-server

After installation, verify that PHP-FPM is running:

sudo systemctl status php*-fpm

Deploying WordPress

Download the latest WordPress release and extract it to the web root:

cd /var/www/html
sudo wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
sudo tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz
sudo rm latest.tar.gz

Set appropriate ownership for the WordPress directory:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wordpress
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/wordpress

Configuring Caddy

Create or edit the Caddy configuration file at /etc/caddy/Caddyfile:

example.com {
    root * /var/www/html/wordpress
    php_fastcgi unix//run/php/php*-fpm.sock
    encode gzip
    file_server

    handle_errors {
        respond "{err.status_code} {err.status_text}"
    }
}

Replace example.com with your actual domain name. The php*-fpm.sock wildcard matches your installed PHP version.

Validate the configuration:

sudo caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Starting the Server

Enable and start Caddy:

sudo systemctl enable caddy
sudo systemctl start caddy

Verify the service is running:

sudo systemctl status caddy

Data base Setup

Access MySQL and create a database for WordPress:

sudo mysql

CREATE DATABASE wp_database;
CREATE USER 'wp_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'secure_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wp_database.* TO 'wp_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Completing Installation

Navigate to your domain in a web browser. The WordPress installation wizard will prompt you to enter:

• Database name: wp_database
• Username: wp_user
• Password: secure_password
• Database host: localhost
• Table prefix: wp_

Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the setup.

Troubleshooting

If WordPress dislpays permission errors, ensure the web server user has write access to the directory:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wordpress

For HTTPS configuration, Caddy automatically provisions Let's Encrypt certificates when your domain points to the server.