How to configure multiple WordPress sites on a single server

Contents

1. A note about server security
2. Editing your hosts file
3. Creating a new customization file
4. Copying secrets
5. Configuring your new WordPress site

How to configure multiple WordPress sites on a single server

There might come a time where you want to configure multiple WordPress sites on the same server. This can be useful in scenarios where you have small WordPress sites with little traffic. This guide will show you how you can configure multiple WordPress sites on the same server using DebOps.

This guide assumes that you're familiar with how to customize your server. If you don't know how or aren't sure, take a moment to go over this guide first.

A note about server security

One of the important aspects of the DebOps project is security. It wants your server to be as secure as it can be. With that in mind, it's important to know that implementing what's in this guide will reduce the overall security of your server.

Running multiple WordPress sites on a single server isn't as secure as running a single one. This is how you can end up with a soup kitchen server. That said, this guide will walk you through all the necessary steps for ensuring that your server stays as secure as it can be.

Editing your hosts file

The first step is to edit our project's host file that you saw in "Configuring your server". Let's imagine that you already have your first WordPress site configured for wordpress.example.com. Now, you want to add a test site to the same server at the address wordpress_test.example.com like this:

# inventory/hosts

[debops_all_hosts]
wordpress_test.example.com
wordpress.example.com

[wordpress]
wordpress_test.example.com
wordpress.example.com

You can find your hosts file in inventory directory of your project. As you can see, we added wordpress_test.example.com under both [debops_all_hosts] and [wordpress]. You also need to ensure that you updated your DNS to point wordpress_test.example.com to IP of your existing server.

Creating a new customization file

Right now, you should only have a single vars.yml customization file in inventory/host_vars/wordpress.example.com. You're going to create a new vars.yml customization file for wordpress_test.example.com. You'll need to create it in the inventory/host_vars/wordpress.example.com directory and ensure that it contains the following:

wordpress__database_name: 'wordpress_test'
wordpress__user_name: 'wordpress_test'

The vars.yml customization file contains two options: wordpress__database_name and wordpress__user_name. wordpress__database_name is the name of the database that wordpress_test.example.com will use. wordpress__database_name can't be the same value as the vars.yml customization file from wordpress.example.com.

wordpress__user_name is the name of the system user used by wordpress_test.example.com. You also want this option to have a different value than the one for wordpress.example.com. This is option is critical for maximizing the security of your server.

Copying secrets

DebOps keeps a copy of all your server passwords in the secret folder at the root of your project. Because DebOps already configured your database server, you need to copy the root password for the database. That way DebOps will be able to configure the database of your new server.

You'll find the original root password for wordpress.example.com in the password file in the secret/credentials/wordpress.example.com/mariadb/localhost/root folder. You need to create the same password for wordpress_test.example.com. But the file needs to be in the secret/credentials/wordpress_test.example.com/mariadb/localhost/root folder. You'll have to create the folder yourself before configuring the server.

Configuring your new WordPress site

At this point, the only thing left to do is to configure your new WordPress site. This means running the DebOps playbook for wordpress_test.example.com. You can do this by using this command:

$ debops wordpress --limit wordpress_test.example.com