Install WordPress on Ubuntu with NGINX, PHP, and MariaDB from scratch.

Install LEMP Stack

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y nginx mariadb-server php8.1-fpm php8.1-mysql   php8.1-curl php8.1-gd php8.1-xml php8.1-zip php8.1-mbstring

Create WordPress Database

sudo mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE wordpress DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'wpuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPass123!';
GRANT ALL ON wordpress.* TO 'wpuser'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Download WordPress

cd /tmp
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar xzf latest.tar.gz
sudo mv wordpress /var/www/example.com
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/example.com
sudo find /var/www/example.com -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/example.com -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

NGINX Configuration

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;
    root /var/www/example.com;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht { deny all; }
}

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

Configure WordPress

sudo cp /var/www/example.com/wp-config-sample.php /var/www/example.com/wp-config.php
sudo nano /var/www/example.com/wp-config.php

Update these lines with your database credentials:

define( 'DB_NAME', 'wordpress' );
define( 'DB_USER', 'wpuser' );
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'StrongPass123!' );
define( 'DB_HOST', 'localhost' );

Add SSL

sudo apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com

Complete Installation

Browse to https://example.com and complete the WordPress 5-minute install wizard.