Turn-key WordPress Server Image - PressPi [obsolete]

[Rionoskae]

PressPi is the first turn-key WordPress Server image for the Raspberry Pi. It's been configured using nginx for improved performance and reduced server load. It comes pre-installed with 2 core WP plugins - 1 cached content plugin to *drastically* improve page loading times and a site migration plugin to make migrating & backing up your sites incredibly simple.

We've spent hours (if not days) testing and configuring proper server settings, writing tutorials for advanced features, troubleshooting and optimizing. For anything not covered in the "quick start" section below, there is a wealth of additional resources available below if you run into any problems. As always - If you have any questions, feedback or ideas for future versions - We would love to hear from you! ~Enjoy

Latest Versions:
-2.32 = Compatible with Raspberry Pi Model 2 and below
-3.00 = Alpha build for Raspberry Pi Model 3 (needs further testing)



Download PressPi:
You can download PressPi v1.6 HERE.

Installing PressPi:

• 1.) Download Win32DiskImager
  2.) Write image to SD Card. (8gb+)
  3.) Boot & Enjoy!

Running PressPi For The First Time:

• 1.) Login to your Pi. ( pi : raspberry )
  2.) Run “sudo raspi-config” to expand the file system
  3.) Reboot.

About The Image:

• Raspbian Base
  B+ compatible
  Powered by Nginx
  SSH: pi/raspberry
  User: wpadmin / !WPadmin!
  MySQL: wpadmin / !WPadmin!
  PHPmyadmin: wpadmin / !WPadmin!
  Raspcontrol: presspi / !PressPi!
  Access WordPressPi
  http://your_pi_ip_address/wp-login.php
  http://presspi/wp-login.php
  Access PHPmyadmin
  http://presspi:81
  Access Raspcontrol
  http://presspi/raspcontrol

For more information on the image and what it can do - Please visit any of the following resources:

• PressPi.com
  PiImageHub.com
  EveryDay-Tech.com

Update: 12/30/2014
Working on v1.5 as we speak - 1.41 is available now for anyone that wants to take it for a test drive!
Update: 12/31/2014
*1.5 is live!
Update: 1/4/2015
*1.6 is Live!
Update: 5/15/2016
*3.0 Alpha is live


~Cheers
Rionoskae

[Rionoskae]

Yea sorry about that - Meant to upload it last night but got caught up in fixing a few extra odds and ends.

I'll have it up within the next few hours

Update: 12/31/2014
1.5 is uploaded ~Enjoy!

[PorterDon]

I look forward to trying it. This has been needed for a long time.

[Offcenter]

Just checked and saw version 1.5. Thanks!!
I'll download it as soon as I get a chance.

[iinnovations]

I look forward to trying it. This has been needed for a long time.

Why? Is your google broken?

[Rionoskae]

I look forward to trying it. This has been needed for a long time.

Why? Is your google broken?

What exactly is the problem?

1.5 (v2 - 4gb version) was uploading the last 1-2 hours or so - Otherwise everything should work as expected.

[Lob0426]

I look forward to trying it. This has been needed for a long time.

Why? Is your google broken?

Probably so some people can get a blog up without having to learn the nuts and bolts of Linux. I have a tutorial to get a WordPress site up with Apache. It is somewhere around a hundred steps to get the site up and running. Any mistake, like not knowing your way around Linux, at least a little, and you will not get running.

Much easier for someone just to download and install an image.

I would recommend doing the hard way if you want to learn how it is done!

[iinnovations]

100 steps? I find that hard to believe. Pi is a learning machine. You don't have to learn much to install wordpress, which is in itself a web program designed to eliminate the need to understand web authoring technologies. It's just a comical thing and pretty hilariously meta.

C

[Lob0426]

100 steps? I find that hard to believe. Pi is a learning machine. You don't have to learn much to install wordpress, which is in itself a web program designed to eliminate the need to understand web authoring technologies. It's just a comical thing and pretty hilariously meta.

C

I said probably a hundred steps, I never counted them!
You can see for yourself below.
http://rich1.dyndns.tv/?page_id=74
So you start by installing Raspbian, Apache, MySQL and PHP(Standard LAMP install) from an empty card. Then you have to set permissions, configuring the database, Install WordPress....etc....!

If you use NOOBS you can install a LAMP version and get past quite a few steps.

Ask the OP what starting with a empty card then ending with a fully functioning WordPress install takes, this is not UBUNTU. My tutorial is decently detailed! It is a couple of years old now, but it should still work if you do not believe it will end in a Working WordPress site.

You should at least take a look before you call foul!

There is also a Tutorial for Lighttpd in there too if you do not want to use Apache2.

But to save time and aggravation, or you are not up to a challenge, then use the Turn-Key WordPress Server Image. It will save you hours of keyboarding either direct or by SSH!

[iinnovations]

I do not doubt that it saves time, but if you really want to save time, buy a windows box.

You are right. I did not look in detail at your wordpress install blog, but I use wordpress, and I know it's not hard to install. There are approaching 1Billion blogs on the tubes that explain how to install it.

Again, my point was just that the point of the Pi seems to be learning things. By using a completely configured WP installation, you don't really learn much, unless your goal is just to learn WP. If you want to do that, however, you can get a free account on wordpress.org that offers the same thing.

On to the practicality of the thing, I know from experience that WP does not run well on resource-starved systems. This is why there is a complete hosting industry built around providing custom-tailored hosting solutions for WP. The reason for this is that you need a good deal of memory to run it efficiently, especially for a large number of concurrent sessions. While I applaud the author of this image for using nginx, which helps with serving static files on a large number of sessions, nginx doesn't even come with its own PHP handler and relies on either apache as a backend or use of PHP-FPM to even make it work. Not exactly a trivial management solution for someone who can't build it on their own and needs an image to get it off the ground.

I'm sorry to come off as a curmudgeon, which I'm sure I am, but the point of a learning machine isn't to poke a "what the hell do I do" into the forum and come out with an image to download. It's to understand how a computer system works. The Pi is a great platform for doing that. There are many operating systems demonstrated here to work with, so it's not as if you have to just pick just one forever. But pick one now, and start poking at it. Take it apart, put it back together. Learn something.

C

[Rionoskae]

While I agree that the raspberry pi is a great learning tool, the amount of work that went into setting up this particular image to use nginx vs apache isn't a task for the uninitiated. Still( as with all my images I share), I have build instructions for the image on my site if anyone cares to dissect things and build the image themselves.

For what it's worth, it was takenover83's ultraslim image that forced me to learn more about the raspberry pi, so I personally feel that images like these can be a great place for people to start tinkering.

At the end of the day, you can say the same thing about any image posted here in the forums(for which there are many), but to that end you can argue how much is someone learning by copy+pasting directions from the forum into ssh.... I'm pretty technically inclined as I'm sure most pi owners are, but sometimes just having an image ready to go and saving yourself several hours of troubleshooting is just more practical.

In regards to practicality, you're right it won't host a heavily trafficed site/blog - but for a personal project blog or a local dev environment it should be more than enough:) and if someone really likes the idea of hosting their own wp site on the pi, they can move onto learning about clustering pis for improved performance and redundance.

[Lob0426]

I think WordPress works just fine for a "personal" website. Mine has been running for over a year and a half, with few problems. No it's not going to handle high traffic when using a RasPi as its hardware. But quite satisfactory for posting my personal projects. Nearly the same steps used to get my website up were used to get a test site up on a Panda Board ES.

As to this image:
There are a lot of people that just do not have the time to start from zero and get a WordPress site up and running. So this image allows them to use a Raspberry Pi and they will still learn something from doing it. Installing WordPress on a RasPi is not as easy as installing it into windows. Even installing it into UBUNTU takes a bit more effort than into windows. I know as I have now done all three, windows, UBUNTU and Raspbian. Which was the most fun? Putting it on the Raspberry Pi.

Successfully finishing a project usually leads to experimentation. They get WordPress up then want host files from it, or pictures. Or they decide they want to have a backup server. Or they want to have a media player. Due to the low cost of the RasPi you are not stuck with just one board or "machine" to run your projects on, I have eight RasPii. Yes you can use one and just switch out the cards, but most then find that they want their servers up full time or their media bad waiting. At each new project they will gain confidence and try to customize their project to fit their needs.

Everyone had to start someplace. Experience comes with failure, but is more fun with success.

[Lob0426]

@Rionoskae
My brother tried to use the image file and it was slightly too large for the first 8GB SD card. The image needs 7.2GB and his first card only showed 7.1GB available (after using SDFormatter to clear it off) . He did get it imaged onto a card that stated 7.49GB.

You may want to use GParted to reduce the partition size slightly (to 7GB if you can) so the image works on any 8GB SD card even if it is not quite up to its full size rating. I have ran into this before with other images and under size SD cards.

Other than that he has it working but not out to the internet yet.

[Rionoskae]

@Rionoskae
My brother tried to use the image file and it was slightly too large for the first 8GB SD card. The image needs 7.2GB and his first card only showed 7.1GB available (after using SDFormatter to clear it off) . He did get it imaged onto a card that stated 7.49GB.

You may want to use GParted to reduce the partition size slightly (to 7GB if you can) so the image works on any 8GB SD card even if it is not quite up to its full size rating. I have ran into this before with other images and under size SD cards.

Other than that he has it working but not out to the internet yet.

Yea good call

I've since created a compressed version that should fit on any 4gb card ( ~3.5gb total size) - If he is looking to make the site live to the world, there is a guide detailing the process on the links form the 1st page.

~Cheers

[Lob0426]

My total size on my server is 3.6GB right now. I figured you could slim it down a bit.
He has a Win2008 server up already. We use DynDNS for our domain naming. He installed XRDP so he could use remote desktop to carry out some administration. I use both RDP and SSH, I use SSH mostly.

I think he is going to experiment with front-ending his full server with the WordPress site, on the RasPi. Then use GPIO to turn on his full server when he needs it! 6 watts on all the time instead of 100+ watts. He will also be able to turn it off when he is done. His full server will be moved to a different port.

Do you install Fail2ban in Linux as part of your installation?
It stop recursive login attempts. Temporarily bans for serial login attempts.

Is phpMyAdmin on the image? It has come in useful a couple of times.

[PorterDon]

As to this image:
There are a lot of people that just do not have the time to start from zero and get a WordPress site up and running. So this image allows them to use a Raspberry Pi and they will still learn something from doing it. Installing WordPress on a RasPi is not as easy as installing it into windows. Even installing it into UBUNTU takes a bit more effort than into windows. I know as I have now done all three, windows, UBUNTU and Raspbian. Which was the most fun? Putting it on the Raspberry Pi.

As usual I agree what Lobo (Rich) says. When I said "this has been needed for a long time" I meant there are many people who simply do not have the time (or persistence) to learn by failing as I did (so many Pi tutorials are flawed or utterly worthless). Plus, to this day I have my joys surviving the picky, picky WordPress installs. Then swap MySQL for SQLite and life really gets interesting. Funny, I finally mastered the SQLite install but just yesterday finally scrapped it for MySQL. My site, CarLoversJournal.com, will be having dozens, maybe hundreds of photo galleries and will be pushing around some large jpeg files. So I forced myself to get past the SQLite issues but two highly capable gallery packages, NextGEN and Grand Flagallery, repeatedly gave me image upload headaches over SQLite. (If I ever see "0 images uploaded" again I am going to scream! [again]). They have great lightboxes, sliders, full screen and other features that I want to use to maximize the appeal and quality of my photo displays -- so back to MySQL I went [ran]. Turned out to be not so hard a decision after all because with probably thousands of large jpeg files I most likely will resort to caching most of the site with Varnish which, ironically, means my little Pi server will/should serve a lightening fast beautiful gallery show to users globally.

[Rionoskae]

My total size on my server is 3.6GB right now. I figured you could slim it down a bit.
He has a Win2008 server up already. We use DynDNS for our domain naming. He installed XRDP so he could use remote desktop to carry out some administration. I use both RDP and SSH, I use SSH mostly.

I think he is going to experiment with front-ending his full server with the WordPress site, on the RasPi. Then use GPIO to turn on his full server when he needs it! 6 watts on all the time instead of 100+ watts. He will also be able to turn it off when he is done. His full server will be moved to a different port.

Do you install Fail2ban in Linux as part of your installation?
It stop recursive login attempts. Temporarily bans for serial login attempts.

Is phpMyAdmin on the image? It has come in useful a couple of times.

No fail2ban & phpmyadmin isn't currently in the image but it probably should be. I think I'll also add raspcontrol as well to keep an eye on resources.

I honestly wasn't sure how people would end up using the image, figured that most would use it for local dev stuff, but am glad to see that it is already being used for live sites.

Any other suggestions lobo?

[Offcenter]

First, thanks for doing the work to set this up for us!
I'll add another suggestion....
How about an easy way to move all the website files and log
files to a usb drive, off of the SD card. (all the files with a high
number of reads and writes, to prolong the life of the SD card)
I remember that I went through heck trying to get this
to work the first time I set my site up a year ago.
Thanks again, Rionoskae!

[Rionoskae]

Working on 1.6 now - Will include the following:
-PHPmyadmin
-fail2ban
-raspcontrol
-?

Please feel free to make further suggestions!

@offcenter - I haven't had to do this personally yet, but I will definitely look into it. Does it really make that much of a difference?

Also was just testing the compressed version and was having difficulty with SSH, most likely the result of trimming the image (for some reason) since nothing else was changed.... Investigating now - but 1.6 will most likely be the 8gb size due to this recent discovery.

Update:
Got Raspcontrol installed + working - not sure on fail2ban implementation... Think I might opt for a simpler wordpress plugin to provide the end user with a bit more flexibility ( if they decide they want a different solution - easy enough to switch out )

~Cheers

[Offcenter]

@offcenter - I haven't had to do this personally yet, but I will definitely look into it. Does it really make that much of a difference?

Rionoskae, I have my present website running with all the website files
and log files on a 64 gig thumb drive. I have to think that it does help, since it has been
running for over a year without a problem.
Having the website files on a separate disk drive means that I also have
a LOT more room for pictures, videos, and the other stuff that goes on my
site. I'm not limited to the capacity of a 8 gig SD card.
Also, if the SD card does crash, I won't lose my website, just the OS.
I'm not really familiar with how Wordpress works, but it must do a lot
of reading and writing considering the way it creates pages on the fly.
Thanks again!!

[Offcenter]

Comments have been made about Pi being a "learning machine".
It certainly is just that and I have learned a lot playing with it.
But I will NEVER be as good with this stuff as some of you guys.
I prefer to set up my webserver the easy way with Rionoskae's
system, and then do my "learning" on my spare Pi.
(actually I have TWO spare ones!)
That way, if I screw something up while learning, it's no big
deal. At least I didn't crash my website while experimenting.

[DougieLawson]

I prefer to set up my webserver the easy way with Rionoskae's
system, and then do my "learning" on my spare Pi.
(actually I have TWO spare ones!)
That way, if I screw something up while learning, it's no big
deal. At least I didn't crash my website while experimenting.

That sets you apart from the average user who probably has one Pi for everything.

Having a "turnkey" system to run Wordpress isn't a bad thing (for folks who think they need that sort of thing), but it's doesn't teach anything other than how to write an SDCard image to an SDCard and boot that in a Raspberry Pi.

I have three Raspberry Pis (2Bs and an A+), when things screw up that's a positive bonus for learning how to fix them and how to teach folks on this forum how to fix their broken software installations. There's two rules in life: 1. carpe diem (which the Internet generation abbreviate to YOLO) and 2. learn something new everyday. My RPis are helping me achieve #2.

[Offcenter]

I prefer to set up my webserver the easy way with Rionoskae's
system, and then do my "learning" on my spare Pi.
(actually I have TWO spare ones!)
That way, if I screw something up while learning, it's no big
deal. At least I didn't crash my website while experimenting.

Having a "turnkey" system to run Wordpress isn't a bad thing (for folks who think they need that sort of thing), but it's doesn't teach anything other than how to write an SDCard image to an SDCard and boot that in a Raspberry Pi.

Yup, I agree one hundred percent, Doug. But it lets me achieve my goal of getting Wordpress site
up and running. Then I can play and learn on the other two without worry.
(I have two Bs and recently bought a B+ to build my new website on.)
There is nothing worse than spending DAYS trying to figure out how to get one of these
things to do what you want it to, and then in last few steps you screw it up and
have to start all over again. Been there. Done that. Don't want to do it again. LOL!!
By the way, a big thank you to you too, Doug. You helped me get going the first
time and you seem to be more than helpful to many others on here!

[Lob0426]

I do not think you can use php-apc with NGINX.
For plugins I use:
Ban Hammer
Better WordPress Minify (performance)
Stop Spammer Registration Plugin
Revision Control (performance)

I use WP Fast Cache, but I think you said you have W3 Total Cache already.

Spammers have been my biggest headache on my site. Filling it full of "users" so they can attemp to spam the comments full of advertising. Even after turning comments off they continued until I started using Stop Spammers to ban them.

Too many Plugins can slow the site down but these seems to be ok.

OffCenter;
I am not good, just stubborn. I like playing with the hardware more than the software. But it won't run without the software, Dang it!

I still think that getting a RPi into a persons hands may lead to them going further, hopefully trying more complicated projects as they do. So working images can help that along. There will be the ones that build a suite, or a media player from an image and then that's it.

I wish I knew where my old ZX81 was at! It was great!

[Rionoskae]

@Lob0426

Good point on spammer registration - I think I'll go ahead and configure the blacklist settings i have from my main server, seems to keep everything at bay for the last 2 years. Though... a plugin may be the better option as these settings might be over-rided when the import feature is used to import a different site.

Well I think for now I'll just configure it without the spam registration plugin and do some testing - As far as caching I use WP super cache on the PressPi image. I considered adding a minify plugin as well - but I know some premuim themes have a built in minify API and I didn't want that conflicting and causing problems. ( thrive themes comes to mind here )... But perhaps I am over thinking that one.

In any event - I installed fail2ban - Seems to test ok, kicking me out after 6 failed login attempts via putty. As far as phpmyadmin goes...still working on getting that going and having some difficulty. But I'll sort it out soon enough i'm sure