ARCHIVED: Install WordPress on your Webserve account

This content has been archived, and is no longer maintained by Indiana University. Information here may no longer be accurate, and links may no longer be available or reliable.
Note:

Due to the evolving coronavirus situation, the retirement of Webserve was delayed until April 16 to allow classes that reference sites on Webserve to continue with minimal disruption.

All remaining Webserve sites were disabled beginning April 16, along with login access to webserve.iu.edu. If you have websites that still need to be moved to IU Sitehosting, you should migrate immediately.

When you install software on Webserve, make sure it follows the guidelines for installing software on IU central accounts and stays up to date.

UITS provides the following instructions to ensure secure use of this software, not promote its use. Once installed, the software must be monitored closely or else removed to prevent compromise. This software will be a target for hackers who seek to gain control of your account and use it for unauthorized purposes; to avoid this potential problem, use Indiana University's Web Content Management System (WCMS).

Follow the steps below to install WordPress on your Webserve account.

  1. Download WordPress and extract the zipped files to the desktop.
  2. Open WinSCP and log into your Webserve account; for help, see ARCHIVED: Use WinSCP to connect to Webserve.
  3. The left pane lists your local files; the right pane lists your server files. In the right (server) pane, within the wwws folder, navigate to the folder where you want to put WordPress (or simply select wwws if you're installing WordPress at the root level). In the left (local) pane, open the folder that contains WordPress. Select all the WordPress files (Ctrl-a) and press F5 to copy them to the server. Click Copy. It will take some time to copy the files.
    Important:

    Before continuing, make sure that you have already set up your MySQL for Webserve account.

    Once you have set up your account, continue following the steps below.

  4. Using the instructions in Use MySQL Workbench to connect to the Sitehost MySQL servers, connect to your account on either Test (mysql-test.uits.iu.edu) or Production (mysql.uits.iu.edu), and then:
    1. To create the WordPress database, enter:
        CALL api.createSchema('name_of_the_Schema');
      
    2. Select your schema, and then call the createUser API to create your user (the username cannot include the word root):
        CALL api.createUser('SomeNameNotIncludingROOT', '129.79.78.%', 'pwdHere')
      

      The password must contain at least:

      • Nine characters
      • Two uppercase letters
      • Two lowercase letters
      • Two numbers
      • Two of the following allowed special characters:
          ‘ ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ - + = { } [ ] / < > , . ; ? ' : | (space)
    3. Call the grant api in order to give your user the permissions needed to make edits to the database:
        CALL api.grant('groupacct_SomeNameNotIncludingROOT', '129.79.78.%','SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP','prefix_name_of_the_Schema', '*')
  5. In a browser, visit the wordpress directory on your Webserve account (for example, https://www.indiana.edu/~account/wordpress/; replace account with your Webserve account name).

    You should see a page asking you to choose a language. If you don't see a page like this, check that you successfully uploaded the WordPress files to your Webserve account in step 3.

  6. After choosing a language, a screen will eventually prompt you for database connection details.

    Your account name will be prepended to the schema name and username you created in step 4. The database host will be mysql-test.uits.iu.edu:3306 (Test) or mysql.uits.iu.edu:3306 (Production).

    Continue the setup process as prompted.

    Note:
    When creating your WordPress administrator account, the username and password should not match your Webserve account credentials.
  7. View your WordPress site by visiting https://www.indiana.edu/~account/path-to-wordpress/.

    Manage your WordPress site by logging into https://www.indiana.edu/~account/path-to-wordpress/wp-login.php.

    In both URLs, replace account with your Webserve account name and path-to-wordpress with the name of the folder where you installed WordPress.

  8. You should become familiar with WordPress security concerns; see WordPress security.

For help, contact Tier 2.

This is document bfsm in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2021-09-08 10:19:32.