🥇Automate WordPress installation with NGINX Unit and Ubuntu

There are many tutorials on how to install WordPress, a Google search for "WordPress install" will turn up about half a million results. However, in fact, there are very few good guides among them, according to which you can install and configure WordPress and the underlying operating system so that they are capable of support for a long period of time. Perhaps the correct settings are highly dependent on specific needs, or this is due to the fact that a detailed explanation makes the article hard to read.

In this article, we'll try to combine the best of both worlds by providing a bash script to automatically install WordPress on Ubuntu, as well as walk through it, explaining what each piece does, as well as the compromises we made in developing it. If you are an advanced user, you can skip the text of the article and just take the script for modification and use in your environments. The output of the script is a custom WordPress installation with Lets Encrypt support, running on NGINX Unit and suitable for production use.

The developed architecture for deploying WordPress using the NGINX Unit is described in older article, now we will also further configure things that were not covered there (as in many other tutorials):

WordPress CLI
Let's Encrypt and TLSSSL Certificates
Automatic renewal of certificates
NGINX caching
NGINX Compression
HTTPS and HTTP/2 support
Automation of the process

The article will describe the installation on one server, which will simultaneously host a static processing server, a PHP processing server, and a database. An installation that supports multiple virtual hosts and services is a potential topic for the future. If you want us to write about something that is not in these articles, write in the comments.

Requirements

Container server (LXC or Lxd), a virtual machine, or a regular iron server with at least 512MB of RAM and Ubuntu 18.04 or newer installed.
Internet accessible ports 80 and 443
Domain name associated with the public ip address of this server
Root access (sudo).

Architecture Overview

The architecture is the same as described earlier, a three-tier web application. It consists of PHP scripts that run on the PHP engine and static files that are processed by the web server.

General Principles

Many configuration commands in a script are wrapped in if conditions for idempotency: the script can be run multiple times without the risk of changing settings that are already in place.
The script tries to install software from repositories, so you can apply system updates in one command (apt upgrade for Ubuntu).
Commands try to detect that they are running in a container so they can change their settings accordingly.
In order to set the number of thread processes to start in the settings, the script tries to guess the automatic settings for working in containers, virtual machines, and hardware servers.
When describing settings, we always think first of all about automation, which, we hope, will become the basis for creating your own infrastructure as code.
All commands are run as user root, because they change the basic system settings, but directly WordPress runs as a regular user.

Setting environment variables

Set the following environment variables before running the script:

WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD - WordPress database password
WORDPRESS_ADMIN_USER - WordPress admin name
WORDPRESS_ADMIN_PASSWORD - WordPress admin password
WORDPRESS_ADMIN_EMAIL - WordPress admin email
WORDPRESS_URL is the full URL of the WordPress site, starting at https://.
LETS_ENCRYPT_STAGING - empty by default, but by setting the value to 1, you will use the Let's Encrypt staging servers, which are necessary for frequently requesting certificates when testing your settings, otherwise Let's Encrypt may temporarily block your ip address due to a large number of requests.

The script checks that these WordPress-related variables are set and exits if not.
Script lines 572-576 check the value LETS_ENCRYPT_STAGING.

Setting derived environment variables

The script on lines 55-61 sets the following environment variables, either to some hard-coded value or using a value obtained from the variables set in the previous section:

DEBIAN_FRONTEND="noninteractive" - Tells applications that they are running in a script and that there is no possibility of user interaction.
WORDPRESS_CLI_VERSION="2.4.0" is the version of the WordPress CLI application.
WORDPRESS_CLI_MD5= "dedd5a662b80cda66e9e25d44c23b25c" — checksum of the WordPress CLI 2.4.0 executable file (the version is specified in the variable WORDPRESS_CLI_VERSION). The script on line 162 uses this value to check that the correct WordPress CLI file has been downloaded.
UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE="16M" - the maximum file size that can be uploaded in WordPress. This setting is used in several places, so it's easier to set it in one place.
TLS_HOSTNAME= "$(echo ${WORDPRESS_URL} | cut -d'/' -f3)" - hostname of the system, retrieved from the WORDPRESS_URL variable. Used to obtain appropriate TLS/SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt as well as internal WordPress verification.
NGINX_CONF_DIR="/etc/nginx" - path to the directory with NGINX settings, including the main file nginx.conf.
CERT_DIR="/etc/letsencrypt/live/${TLS_HOSTNAME}" — the path to the Let's Encrypt certificates for the WordPress site, obtained from the variable TLS_HOSTNAME.

Assigning a hostname to a WordPress server

The script sets the server's hostname to match the site's domain name. This is not required, but it is more convenient to send outgoing mail via SMTP when setting up a single server, as configured by the script.

script code

# Change the hostname to be the same as the WordPress hostname
if [ ! "$(hostname)" == "${TLS_HOSTNAME}" ]; then
  echo " Changing hostname to ${TLS_HOSTNAME}"
  hostnamectl set-hostname "${TLS_HOSTNAME}"
fi

Adding hostname to /etc/hosts

Addition WP-Cron used to run periodic tasks, requires WordPress to be able to access itself via HTTP. To make sure WP-Cron works correctly on all environments, the script adds a line to the file / Etc / hostsso that WordPress can access itself via the loopback interface:

script code

# Add the hostname to /etc/hosts
if [ "$(grep -m1 "${TLS_HOSTNAME}" /etc/hosts)" = "" ]; then
  echo " Adding hostname ${TLS_HOSTNAME} to /etc/hosts so that WordPress can ping itself"
  printf "::1 %sn127.0.0.1 %sn" "${TLS_HOSTNAME}" "${TLS_HOSTNAME}" >> /etc/hosts
fi

Installing the tools required for the next steps

The rest of the script needs some programs and assumes the repositories are up to date. We update the list of repositories, after which we install the necessary tools:

script code

# Make sure tools needed for install are present
echo " Installing prerequisite tools"
apt-get -qq update
apt-get -qq install -y 
  bc 
  ca-certificates 
  coreutils 
  curl 
  gnupg2 
  lsb-release

Adding NGINX Unit and NGINX Repositories

The script installs NGINX Unit and open source NGINX from the official NGINX repositories to make sure the versions with the latest security patches and bug fixes are used.

The script adds the NGINX Unit repository and then the NGINX repository, adding the repositories key and configuration files apt, defining access to repositories via the Internet.

The actual installation of NGINX Unit and NGINX happens in the next section. We pre-add the repositories so we don't have to update the metadata multiple times, which makes installation faster.

script code

# Install the NGINX Unit repository
if [ ! -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/unit.list ]; then
  echo " Installing NGINX Unit repository"
  curl -fsSL https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key | apt-key add -
  echo "deb https://packages.nginx.org/unit/ubuntu/ $(lsb_release -cs) unit" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/unit.list
fi

# Install the NGINX repository
if [ ! -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list ]; then
  echo " Installing NGINX repository"
  curl -fsSL https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key | apt-key add -
  echo "deb https://nginx.org/packages/mainline/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) nginx" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list
fi

Installing NGINX, NGINX Unit, PHP MariaDB, Certbot (Let's Encrypt) and their dependencies

Once all the repositories are added, update the metadata and install the applications. The packages installed by the script also include the PHP extensions recommended when running WordPress.org

script code

echo " Updating repository metadata"
apt-get -qq update

# Install PHP with dependencies and NGINX Unit
echo " Installing PHP, NGINX Unit, NGINX, Certbot, and MariaDB"
apt-get -qq install -y --no-install-recommends 
  certbot 
  python3-certbot-nginx 
  php-cli 
  php-common 
  php-bcmath 
  php-curl 
  php-gd 
  php-imagick 
  php-mbstring 
  php-mysql 
  php-opcache 
  php-xml 
  php-zip 
  ghostscript 
  nginx 
  unit 
  unit-php 
  mariadb-server

Setting up PHP for use with NGINX Unit and WordPress

The script creates a settings file in the directory conf.d. This sets the maximum size for PHP uploads, turns on PHP error output to STDERR so they will be written to the NGINX Unit log, and restarts the NGINX Unit.

script code

# Find the major and minor PHP version so that we can write to its conf.d directory
PHP_MAJOR_MINOR_VERSION="$(php -v | head -n1 | cut -d' ' -f2 | cut -d'.' -f1,2)"

if [ ! -f "/etc/php/${PHP_MAJOR_MINOR_VERSION}/embed/conf.d/30-wordpress-overrides.ini" ]; then
  echo " Configuring PHP for use with NGINX Unit and WordPress"
  # Add PHP configuration overrides
  cat > "/etc/php/${PHP_MAJOR_MINOR_VERSION}/embed/conf.d/30-wordpress-overrides.ini" << EOM
; Set a larger maximum upload size so that WordPress can handle
; bigger media files.
upload_max_filesize=${UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE}
post_max_size=${UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE}
; Write error log to STDERR so that error messages show up in the NGINX Unit log
error_log=/dev/stderr
EOM
fi

# Restart NGINX Unit because we have reconfigured PHP
echo " Restarting NGINX Unit"
service unit restart

Specifying MariaDB Database Settings for WordPress

We have chosen MariaDB over MySQL as it has more community activity and is also likely to provides better performance by default (probably, everything is simpler here: to install MySQL, you need to add another repository, approx. translator).

The script creates a new database and creates credentials to access WordPress via the loopback interface:

script code

# Set up the WordPress database
echo " Configuring MariaDB for WordPress"
mysqladmin create wordpress || echo "Ignoring above error because database may already exist"
mysql -e "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO "wordpress"@"localhost" IDENTIFIED BY "$WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD"; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;"

Installing the WordPress CLI Program

At this step, the script installs the program WP-CLI. With it, you can install and manage WordPress settings without having to manually edit files, update the database, or enter the control panel. It can also be used to install themes and add-ons and update WordPress.

script code

if [ ! -f /usr/local/bin/wp ]; then
  # Install the WordPress CLI
  echo " Installing the WordPress CLI tool"
  curl --retry 6 -Ls "https://github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli/releases/download/v${WORDPRESS_CLI_VERSION}/wp-cli-${WORDPRESS_CLI_VERSION}.phar" > /usr/local/bin/wp
  echo "$WORDPRESS_CLI_MD5 /usr/local/bin/wp" | md5sum -c -
  chmod +x /usr/local/bin/wp
fi

Installing and configuring WordPress

The script installs the latest version of WordPress in a directory /var/www/wordpressand also changes the settings:

The database connection works over unix domain socket instead of TCP on loopback to cut down on TCP traffic.
WordPress adds a prefix https:// to the URL if clients connect to NGINX over HTTPS, and also sends the remote hostname (as provided by NGINX) to PHP. We use a piece of code to set this up.
WordPress needs HTTPS for login
The default URL structure is based on resources
Sets the correct permissions on the file system for the WordPress directory.

script code

if [ ! -d /var/www/wordpress ]; then
  # Create WordPress directories
  mkdir -p /var/www/wordpress
  chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

  # Download WordPress using the WordPress CLI
  echo " Installing WordPress"
  su -s /bin/sh -c 'wp --path=/var/www/wordpress core download' www-data

  WP_CONFIG_CREATE_CMD="wp --path=/var/www/wordpress config create --extra-php --dbname=wordpress --dbuser=wordpress --dbhost="localhost:/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock" --dbpass="${WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD}""

  # This snippet is injected into the wp-config.php file when it is created;
  # it informs WordPress that we are behind a reverse proxy and as such
  # allows it to generate links using HTTPS
  cat > /tmp/wp_forwarded_for.php << 'EOM'
/* Turn HTTPS 'on' if HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO matches 'https' */
if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO']) && strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'], 'https') !== false) {
    $_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on';
}
if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_HOST'])) {
    $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_HOST'];
}
EOM

  # Create WordPress configuration
  su -s /bin/sh -p -c "cat /tmp/wp_forwarded_for.php | ${WP_CONFIG_CREATE_CMD}" www-data
  rm /tmp/wp_forwarded_for.php
  su -s /bin/sh -p -c "wp --path=/var/www/wordpress config set 'FORCE_SSL_ADMIN' 'true'" www-data

  # Install WordPress
  WP_SITE_INSTALL_CMD="wp --path=/var/www/wordpress core install --url="${WORDPRESS_URL}" --title="${WORDPRESS_SITE_TITLE}" --admin_user="${WORDPRESS_ADMIN_USER}" --admin_password="${WORDPRESS_ADMIN_PASSWORD}" --admin_email="${WORDPRESS_ADMIN_EMAIL}" --skip-email"
  su -s /bin/sh -p -c "${WP_SITE_INSTALL_CMD}" www-data

  # Set permalink structure to a sensible default that isn't in the UI
  su -s /bin/sh -p -c "wp --path=/var/www/wordpress option update permalink_structure '/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/'" www-data

  # Remove sample file because it is cruft and could be a security problem
  rm /var/www/wordpress/wp-config-sample.php

  # Ensure that WordPress permissions are correct
  find /var/www/wordpress -type d -exec chmod g+s {} ;
  chmod g+w /var/www/wordpress/wp-content
  chmod -R g+w /var/www/wordpress/wp-content/themes
  chmod -R g+w /var/www/wordpress/wp-content/plugins
fi

Setting up NGINX Unit

The script configures the NGINX Unit to run PHP and process WordPress paths, isolating the PHP process namespace and optimizing performance settings. There are three features to look out for here:

Support for namespaces is determined by condition, based on checking that the script is running in a container. This is necessary because most container setups do not support nested launch of containers.
If there is support for namespaces, disable the namespace network. This is to allow WordPress to connect to both endpoints and be available on the web at the same time.
The maximum number of processes is defined as follows: (Available memory for running MariaDB and NGINX Uniy)/(RAM limit in PHP + 5)
This value is set in the NGINX Unit settings.

This value also implies that there are always at least two PHP processes running, which is important because WordPress makes a lot of asynchronous requests to itself, and without additional processes, running e.g. WP-Cron will break. You may want to increase or decrease these limits based on your local settings, because the settings created here are conservative. On most production systems, the settings are between 10 and 100.

script code

if [ "${container:-unknown}" != "lxc" ] && [ "$(grep -m1 -a container=lxc /proc/1/environ | tr -d '')" == "" ]; then
  NAMESPACES='"namespaces": {
        "cgroup": true,
        "credential": true,
        "mount": true,
        "network": false,
        "pid": true,
        "uname": true
    }'
else
  NAMESPACES='"namespaces": {}'
fi

PHP_MEM_LIMIT="$(grep 'memory_limit' /etc/php/7.4/embed/php.ini | tr -d ' ' | cut -f2 -d= | numfmt --from=iec)"
AVAIL_MEM="$(grep MemAvailable /proc/meminfo | tr -d ' kB' | cut -f2 -d: | numfmt --from-unit=K)"
MAX_PHP_PROCESSES="$(echo "${AVAIL_MEM}/${PHP_MEM_LIMIT}+5" | bc)"
echo " Calculated the maximum number of PHP processes as ${MAX_PHP_PROCESSES}. You may want to tune this value due to variations in your configuration. It is not unusual to see values between 10-100 in production configurations."

echo " Configuring NGINX Unit to use PHP and WordPress"
cat > /tmp/wordpress.json << EOM
{
  "settings": {
    "http": {
      "header_read_timeout": 30,
      "body_read_timeout": 30,
      "send_timeout": 30,
      "idle_timeout": 180,
      "max_body_size": $(numfmt --from=iec ${UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE})
    }
  },
  "listeners": {
    "127.0.0.1:8080": {
      "pass": "routes/wordpress"
    }
  },
  "routes": {
    "wordpress": [
      {
        "match": {
          "uri": [
            "*.php",
            "*.php/*",
            "/wp-admin/"
          ]
        },
        "action": {
          "pass": "applications/wordpress/direct"
        }
      },
      {
        "action": {
          "share": "/var/www/wordpress",
          "fallback": {
            "pass": "applications/wordpress/index"
          }
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "applications": {
    "wordpress": {
      "type": "php",
      "user": "www-data",
      "group": "www-data",
      "processes": {
        "max": ${MAX_PHP_PROCESSES},
        "spare": 1
      },
      "isolation": {
        ${NAMESPACES}
      },
      "targets": {
        "direct": {
          "root": "/var/www/wordpress/"
        },
        "index": {
          "root": "/var/www/wordpress/",
          "script": "index.php"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
EOM

curl -X PUT --data-binary @/tmp/wordpress.json --unix-socket /run/control.unit.sock http://localhost/config

Setting up NGINX

Configuring Basic NGINX Settings

The script creates a directory for the NGINX cache and then creates the main configuration file nginx.conf. Pay attention to the number of handler processes and the setting of the maximum file size for upload. There is also a line that includes the compression settings file defined in the next section, followed by the caching settings.

script code

# Make directory for NGINX cache
mkdir -p /var/cache/nginx/proxy

echo " Configuring NGINX"
cat > ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/nginx.conf << EOM
user nginx;
worker_processes auto;
error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}
http {
    include       ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;
    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;
    sendfile        on;
    client_max_body_size ${UPLOAD_MAX_FILESIZE};
    keepalive_timeout  65;
    # gzip settings
    include ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/gzip_compression.conf;
    # Cache settings
    proxy_cache_path /var/cache/nginx/proxy
        levels=1:2
        keys_zone=wp_cache:10m
        max_size=10g
        inactive=60m
        use_temp_path=off;
    include ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/conf.d/*.conf;
}
EOM

Setting up NGINX compression

Compressing content on the fly before sending it to clients is a great way to improve site performance, but only if compression is configured correctly. This section of the script is based on settings hence.

script code

cat > ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/gzip_compression.conf << 'EOM'
# Credit: https://github.com/h5bp/server-configs-nginx/
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# | Compression                                                        |
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_gzip_module.html
# Enable gzip compression.
# Default: off
gzip on;
# Compression level (1-9).
# 5 is a perfect compromise between size and CPU usage, offering about 75%
# reduction for most ASCII files (almost identical to level 9).
# Default: 1
gzip_comp_level 6;
# Don't compress anything that's already small and unlikely to shrink much if at
# all (the default is 20 bytes, which is bad as that usually leads to larger
# files after gzipping).
# Default: 20
gzip_min_length 256;
# Compress data even for clients that are connecting to us via proxies,
# identified by the "Via" header (required for CloudFront).
# Default: off
gzip_proxied any;
# Tell proxies to cache both the gzipped and regular version of a resource
# whenever the client's Accept-Encoding capabilities header varies;
# Avoids the issue where a non-gzip capable client (which is extremely rare
# today) would display gibberish if their proxy gave them the gzipped version.
# Default: off
gzip_vary on;
# Compress all output labeled with one of the following MIME-types.
# `text/html` is always compressed by gzip module.
# Default: text/html
gzip_types
  application/atom+xml
  application/geo+json
  application/javascript
  application/x-javascript
  application/json
  application/ld+json
  application/manifest+json
  application/rdf+xml
  application/rss+xml
  application/vnd.ms-fontobject
  application/wasm
  application/x-web-app-manifest+json
  application/xhtml+xml
  application/xml
  font/eot
  font/otf
  font/ttf
  image/bmp
  image/svg+xml
  text/cache-manifest
  text/calendar
  text/css
  text/javascript
  text/markdown
  text/plain
  text/xml
  text/vcard
  text/vnd.rim.location.xloc
  text/vtt
  text/x-component
  text/x-cross-domain-policy;
EOM

Setting up NGINX for WordPress

Next, the script creates a configuration file for WordPress default.conf in the catalog conf.d. It is configured here:

Activating TLS certificates received from Let's Encrypt via Certbot (setting it up will be in the next section)
Configuring TLS security settings based on recommendations from Let's Encrypt
Enable caching skip requests for 1 hour by default
Disable access logging, as well as error logging if file not found, for two common requested files: favicon.ico and robots.txt
Prevent access to hidden files and some files . Phpto prevent illegal access or unintended start
Disable access logging for static and font files
Header setting Access-Control-Allow-Origin for font files
Adding routing for index.php and other statics.

script code

cat > ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/conf.d/default.conf << EOM
upstream unit_php_upstream {
    server 127.0.0.1:8080;
    keepalive 32;
}
server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    # ACME-challenge used by Certbot for Let's Encrypt
    location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
      root /var/www/certbot;
    }
    location / {
      return 301 https://${TLS_HOSTNAME}$request_uri;
    }
}
server {
    listen      443 ssl http2;
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
    server_name ${TLS_HOSTNAME};
    root        /var/www/wordpress/;
    # Let's Encrypt configuration
    ssl_certificate         ${CERT_DIR}/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key     ${CERT_DIR}/privkey.pem;
    ssl_trusted_certificate ${CERT_DIR}/chain.pem;
    include ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/options-ssl-nginx.conf;
    ssl_dhparam ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/ssl-dhparams.pem;
    # OCSP stapling
    ssl_stapling on;
    ssl_stapling_verify on;
    # Proxy caching
    proxy_cache wp_cache;
    proxy_cache_valid 200 302 1h;
    proxy_cache_valid 404 1m;
    proxy_cache_revalidate on;
    proxy_cache_background_update on;
    proxy_cache_lock on;
    proxy_cache_use_stale error timeout http_500 http_502 http_503 http_504;
    location = /favicon.ico {
        log_not_found off;
        access_log off;
    }
    location = /robots.txt {
        allow all;
        log_not_found off;
        access_log off;
    }

    # Deny all attempts to access hidden files such as .htaccess, .htpasswd,
    # .DS_Store (Mac)
    # Keep logging the requests to parse later (or to pass to firewall utilities
    # such as fail2ban)
    location ~ /. {
        deny all;
    }
    # Deny access to any files with a .php extension in the uploads directory;
    # works in subdirectory installs and also in multi-site network.
    # Keep logging the requests to parse later (or to pass to firewall utilities
    # such as fail2ban).
    location ~* /(?:uploads|files)/.*.php$ {
        deny all;
    }
    # WordPress: deny access to wp-content, wp-includes PHP files
    location ~* ^/(?:wp-content|wp-includes)/.*.php$ {
        deny all;
    }
    # Deny public access to wp-config.php
    location ~* wp-config.php {
        deny all;
    }
    # Do not log access for static assets, media
    location ~* .(?:css(.map)?|js(.map)?|jpe?g|png|gif|ico|cur|heic|webp|tiff?|mp3|m4a|aac|ogg|midi?|wav|mp4|mov|webm|mpe?g|avi|ogv|flv|wmv)$ {
        access_log off;
    }
    location ~* .(?:svgz?|ttf|ttc|otf|eot|woff2?)$ {
        add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*";
        access_log off;
    }
    location / {
        try_files $uri @index_php;
    }
    location @index_php {
        proxy_socket_keepalive on;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Connection "";
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_pass       http://unit_php_upstream;
    }
    location ~* .php$ {
        proxy_socket_keepalive on;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Connection "";
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        try_files        $uri =404;
        proxy_pass       http://unit_php_upstream;
    }
}
EOM

Setting up Certbot for certificates from Let's Encrypt and auto-renewing them

Certbot is a free tool from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that allows you to obtain and automatically renew TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt. The script does the following to configure Certbot to process certificates from Let's Encrypt in NGINX:

Stops NGINX
Downloads recommended TLS settings
Runs Certbot to get certificates for the site
Restarts NGINX to use certificates
Configures Certbot to run daily at 3:24 AM to check if certificates need to be renewed, and if necessary, download new certificates and restart NGINX.

script code

echo " Stopping NGINX in order to set up Let's Encrypt"
service nginx stop

mkdir -p /var/www/certbot
chown www-data:www-data /var/www/certbot
chmod g+s /var/www/certbot

if [ ! -f ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/options-ssl-nginx.conf ]; then
  echo " Downloading recommended TLS parameters"
  curl --retry 6 -Ls -z "Tue, 14 Apr 2020 16:36:07 GMT" 
    -o "${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/options-ssl-nginx.conf" 
    "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/certbot/certbot/master/certbot-nginx/certbot_nginx/_internal/tls_configs/options-ssl-nginx.conf" 
    || echo "Couldn't download latest options-ssl-nginx.conf"
fi

if [ ! -f ${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/ssl-dhparams.pem ]; then
  echo " Downloading recommended TLS DH parameters"
  curl --retry 6 -Ls -z "Tue, 14 Apr 2020 16:49:18 GMT" 
    -o "${NGINX_CONF_DIR}/ssl-dhparams.pem" 
    "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/certbot/certbot/master/certbot/certbot/ssl-dhparams.pem" 
    || echo "Couldn't download latest ssl-dhparams.pem"
fi

# If tls_certs_init.sh hasn't been run before, remove the self-signed certs
if [ ! -d "/etc/letsencrypt/accounts" ]; then
  echo " Removing self-signed certificates"
  rm -rf "${CERT_DIR}"
fi

if [ "" = "${LETS_ENCRYPT_STAGING:-}" ] || [ "0" = "${LETS_ENCRYPT_STAGING}" ]; then
  CERTBOT_STAGING_FLAG=""
else
  CERTBOT_STAGING_FLAG="--staging"
fi

if [ ! -f "${CERT_DIR}/fullchain.pem" ]; then
  echo " Generating certificates with Let's Encrypt"
  certbot certonly --standalone 
         -m "${WORDPRESS_ADMIN_EMAIL}" 
         ${CERTBOT_STAGING_FLAG} 
         --agree-tos --force-renewal --non-interactive 
         -d "${TLS_HOSTNAME}"
fi

echo " Starting NGINX in order to use new configuration"
service nginx start

# Write crontab for periodic Let's Encrypt cert renewal
if [ "$(crontab -l | grep -m1 'certbot renew')" == "" ]; then
  echo " Adding certbot to crontab for automatic Let's Encrypt renewal"
  (crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo "24 3 * * * certbot renew --nginx --post-hook 'service nginx reload'") | crontab -
fi

Additional customization of your site

We talked above about how our script configures NGINX and NGINX Unit to serve a production-ready site with TLSSSL enabled. You can also, depending on your needs, add in the future:

Support Brotli, improved on-the-fly compression over HTTPS
ModSecurity с rules for wordpressto prevent automated attacks on your site
Резервное копирование for WordPress that suits you
Protection through AppArmor (on Ubuntu)
Postfix or msmtp so WordPress can send mail
Checking your site so you understand how much traffic it can handle

For even better site performance, we recommend upgrading to NGINX Plus, our commercial, enterprise-grade product based on open source NGINX. Its subscribers will receive a dynamically loaded Brotli module, as well as (for an additional fee) NGINX ModSecurity WAF. We also offer NGINX App Protect, a WAF module for NGINX Plus based on industry-leading security technology from F5.

Note For support of a highly loaded site, you can contact the specialists Southbridge. We will ensure fast and reliable operation of your website or service under any load.

Source: habr.com

Automating WordPress installation with NGINX Unit and Ubuntu

Requirements

Architecture Overview

General Principles

Setting environment variables

Setting derived environment variables

Assigning a hostname to a WordPress server

Adding hostname to /etc/hosts

Installing the tools required for the next steps

Adding NGINX Unit and NGINX Repositories

Installing NGINX, NGINX Unit, PHP MariaDB, Certbot (Let's Encrypt) and their dependencies

Setting up PHP for use with NGINX Unit and WordPress

Specifying MariaDB Database Settings for WordPress

Installing the WordPress CLI Program

Installing and configuring WordPress

Setting up NGINX Unit

Setting up NGINX

Configuring Basic NGINX Settings

Setting up NGINX compression

Setting up NGINX for WordPress

Setting up Certbot for certificates from Let's Encrypt and auto-renewing them

Additional customization of your site