Hosting WordPress on Oracle Cloud Always Free (AMD Micro)

Prerequisites

An active Oracle Cloud account.
A domain name (registered at Porkbun or similar).

Yes, this guide was partly generated by AI (for formatting), specifically Gemini, but was fact-checked by me.

Phase 1: Create the VPS Instance (Oracle Cloud)

Login: Go to the Oracle Cloud Console.
Navigate: Go to Compute > Instances > Create Instance.
Name: my-wordpress-server (or similar).
Image & Shape:
- Image: Change Image > Canonical Ubuntu 24.04 Minimal.
- Shape: Change Shape > VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro (AMD, 1 OCPU, 1GB RAM).
Networking:
- Keep options as is, we’ll get an IP address later which won’t change
SSH Keys:
- Select “Generate a key pair for me” (or upload your own public key).
- IMPORTANT: Click Save Private Key. Keep this safe; you cannot log in without it.
Create: Click the Create button. Wait for the state to turn “Running” (Green).

Phase 2: Configure Networking (Open Ports 80/443) and IP

You must open the firewall in two places: the Oracle Network (VCN) and the Server itself.

A. Oracle Cloud Console (VCN)

On the Instance details page, click the link under Subnet (e.g., subnet-2026...).
Click Default Security List for…
Click Add Ingress Rules.
Add the following rule:
- Source CIDR: 0.0.0.0/0
- IP Protocol: TCP
- Destination Port Range: 80,443
Click Add Ingress Rules.

B. Server Internal Firewall (IPTables)

Connect to your server via SSH and run these commands to insert allow rules at the top of the list:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install iptables-persistent -y
sudo iptables -I INPUT 1 -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -I INPUT 1 -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
sudo netfilter-persistent save

C. IP Address Assignment

Search for “Reserved Public IP” in the search bar, click it.
Click Reserve Public IP
Give it a name, eg, WordPress
Reserve it with the button on the bottom left.
Go to Compute > Instances.
Click on your instance name (my-wordpress-server).
Scroll down to the Resources menu on the left side of the page.
Click Attached VNICs.
You will see a table with one item (usually named the same as your instance). Click the name of that VNIC (e.g., my-wordpress-server).
Find the IPv4 Configuration:
On the new page that loads, look at the Resources menu on the left again.
Click IPv4 Addresses.
Swap the IP:
You will see a row representing your server’s internal and external IP.
Click the three dots (⋮) on the right side of that row.
Select Edit.
In the popup window, look for “Public IP Type”. Change it from “Ephemeral Public IP” to Reserved Public IP.
A dropdown menu will appear. Select the IP you just named (e.g., WordPress).
Click Update.

Phase 3: System Prep

Since the server only has 1GB RAM, we must add a Swap file to prevent crashes.

1. Install Essentials

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install nano wget curl net-tools -y

2. Create 2GB Swap File

sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Phase 4: Install LAMP Stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

1. Install Apache

sudo apt install apache2 -y
sudo systemctl enable apache2

2. Install PHP & Extensions

sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-curl php-gd php-xml php-mbstring php-xmlrpc php-zip php-soap php-intl -y
sudo systemctl restart apache2

3. Install MySQL

sudo apt install mysql-server -y

4. Secure MySQL

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Settings: Validate Password (No), Remove anonymous (Yes), Disallow root remote (Yes), Remove test DB (Yes), Reload tables (Yes).

Phase 5: Create Database

Run commands one by one. Log into MySQL with sudo mysql -u root -p and run the following (replace ‘StrongPassword123’ with your own):

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
CREATE USER 'wp_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword123';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'wp_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Phase 6: Install WordPress (Root Directory)

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

# Move files to main folder
sudo mv wordpress/* .
sudo rm -rf wordpress latest.tar.gz index.html

# Set Permissions
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html

Phase 7: Optimize Apache (Prevent Crashes)

Edit the configuration file: sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/mpm_prefork.conf

Delete the existing content and replace it with this:

<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
    StartServers            2
    MinSpareServers         2
    MaxSpareServers         5
    MaxRequestWorkers       10
    MaxConnectionsPerChild  1000
</IfModule>

Restart Apache: sudo systemctl restart apache2

Phase 8: DNS Setup (Porkbun)

Log in to Porkbun > Domain Management > DNS.
Delete default parking records.
Add Root Record:
- Type: A
- Host: (Leave Blank)
- Answer: YOUR_ORACLE_IP
Add WWW Record:
- Type: CNAME
- Host: www
- Answer: yourdomain.com

Phase 9: SSL Certificate (HTTPS)

1. Install Certbot:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache -y

2. Pre-configure Apache names: sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ServerName yourdomain.com
ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com

3. Generate Certificate (Select “Redirect” when asked):

sudo systemctl reload apache2
sudo certbot --apache

Phase 10: Auto-Updates & Maintenance

# Set Timezone
sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/New_York

# Install Unattended Upgrades
sudo apt install unattended-upgrades -y
sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades

Edit the schedule: sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "true";
Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot-Time "02:00";
Unattended-Upgrade::Remove-Unused-Kernel-Packages "true";

Phase 11: Final WordPress Setup

Browser: Go to https://yourdomain.com.
Language: English.
Database Info:
- Name: wordpress
- User: wp_user
- Password: StrongPassword123
- Host: localhost

Team 334