UPDATE: Microsoft have since simplified and automated the process of deploying WordPress on Azure. I published a post on the process at Create WordPress on Azure App Service | Cloud Build. However, if you prefer learning how to install WordPress manually, continue with the post below.
Azure App Service, part of the Microsoft Azure Cloud platform is a fully managed service for building, deploying, and scaling your web apps. More details on this service can be located at Azure App Service
In this blog post I will go through the process of creating an Azure App Service plan and a MySQL database to host a demo WordPress site.
- Login to the Azure Portal
- Search and select App Services using the search box
3. Click + Create
4. Select you subscription from the drop down if you have more than one
5. Create a resource group and click OK
6. Select a unique name for your website domain. A green tick will be displayed if the name is available.
7. Using the run time stack drop down, select PHP 7.4 (Latest version at the time of writing this post)
8. For the the purpose of this demo, I have selected region UK South, and Linux for the Operating System.
9. Create a new service plan and click ok
10. Click change size
11. Review the available tiers. For the purpose of this demo, I have selected the dev/test version. Note that the test/dev version does not include a custom domain or SSL but you can always upgrade plans later. Click Apply,
12. Click Review + Create. Review the details and click Create
13. Deployment complete. Click Go to Resource and review the various options.
14. WordPress requires a MySQL database so let’s create a database. Using the search field, search MySQL and select Azure Database for MySQL servers
15. Click + Create
16. For the purpose of this demo, I have selected Single Server, but you’ll notice Flexible server was in preview at the time of writing this post.
17. Resource Group: I have selected the resource group I created earlier
18. Input a server name, select region and workload type as required
19. Click configure server and explore the various server sizes on offer. For the purpose of this demo, I have selected the cheapest one available. Don’t forget to delete your resources if you’re lab’ing 🙂
20. High Availability (Zone redundant HA) is not available with the tier i have selected.
Availability Zone: You can optionally specify an availability zone in which you deploy your database server to co-locate with your application
HA: provides enhanced availability for your mission critical workloads by deploying a standby server in a different availability zone within the same region as your primary server
As this is a demo, i won’t be configuring HA
21. Select MySQL version and input a database username and password. Click ‘Next: Networking‘
22. Click + Add current client IP address to add your public IP address to the firewall. Connections from the IP addresses configured in the Firewall rules section below will have access to this server. By default, no public IP addresses are allowed.
23. Click Review + Create. Review the information and click Create. That’s the MySQL Database deployed. We will need to hook the app service plan to the database later.
24. Return to the app service plan we created earlier, click the app service plan.
25. Whilst the MySQL database server is deploying in the background, we’ll connect to our app service via SSH and download WordPress. From the left blade, under Development Tools, select SSH
26. Click Go
27. Type:
cd site/wwwroot/ (enter)
28. We’ll now download the latest WordPress version from WordPress
Type: wget -c http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz (Press enter)
29. Type ls to check if the zip file is visible
30. We’ll now unzip the folder
Type: tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz
31. The above process has unzipped a folder name WordPress. We must move all files from inside the WordPress folder to wwwroot
Type: mv wordpress/* /home/site/wwwroot/
32. We can now delete the WordPress folder and the zip file
rm -rf wordpress/
rm -r latest.tar.gz
33. Next, we’ll connect to our MySQL database using the a free application MySQL WorkBench. You can download the tool from https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/
34. Install the MySQL WorkBench app. If not already installed you’ll be prompted to install C+ + 2019 Redistribute Package before you’re able to install MySQL WorkBench. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/#microsoft-visual-c-redistributable-for-visual-studio-2019
35. Now that MySQL WorkBench has been installed, we can connect to MySQL in Azure. Click the plus icon to add a connection
36. Enter your MySQL details
– connection name: select a name of your choice
– hostname
– username
– Password
You can obtain the hostname and username from the Azure portal, search Azure Database for MySQL server, click your server name and copy the server name and username from the overview tab. If you did not make a note of your password, use the reset password option.
37. After inputting the details, test connection. We have a successful connection. Click ok and ok again.
38. Open your connection located under MySQL connections which will launch MySQL editor
39. Click Schemas
40. Right click sys and click create schema (This is required to allow WordPress to communicate with MySQL)
41. Input a name, copy the name to a notepad file as you’ll require it shortly. Click Apply
Click apply again and finish
42. Return to your web app in the Azure Portal, click overview from the left blade, and then click browse.
43. WordPress has been detected and the install wizard launches. Select your preferred language.
44. Click Let’s Go
45. Input your MySQL details. The database name is the schema name you just created. The username and hostname (servername) can be obtained from your MySQL database on the Azure portal.
46. Click Submit
47. Success, click ‘run the installation’
48. Input site details and continue. Avoid using username of admin as this is the default for WordPress.
Done, you can now configure your WordPress site.
See you at the next post
