Prerequisites
- A VPS running any of our OS options—Ubuntu 16.04, Debian 9, Debian 8, or CentOS 7.
- A non-root, `sudo`-enabled the user. If you only have a `root` user, see our SSH tutorial for details on creating new users.
- A registered domain name.
Step 1: Install EasyEngine
Debian: Before we even try installing EasyEngine, let’s install ca-certificates. If you don’t install this, the wget portion of the following command will fail without any output.
$ sudo apt-get install ca-certificates
To install EasyEngine, simply run the command below:
$ wget -qO ee rt.cx/ee && sudo bash ee
The command first downloads the EasyEngine install script using wget, and then executes it using bash. As usual, we recommend that you take a moment to check out the script itself to ensure that it’s not installing anything you don’t want.
Step 2: Configure your DNS
Before you begin, make sure that you have pointed your domain toward your VPS’ IP address. In this case, both www.DOMAIN.LTD and DOMAIN.TLD need to point to the server. Let’s Encrypt requires these to match up in order to give the certificate. If you bought your domain name via SSD Nodes, we provide the necessary DNS to establish this configuration. If you bought your domain elsewhere, consider setting up a free CloudFlare account to use their DNS tools.
Step 3: Run EasyEngine
EasyEngine aims to make installing WordPress incredibly easy, and the same goes when adding a Let’s Encrypt certificate on top of that. It’s all done in a single command:
$ sudo ee site create DOMAIN.TLD --wp --letsencrypt
You’ll start to see output in the terminal as EasyEngine begins to download, install, and configure packages.
At some point, you will be requested to confirm that you want to use Let’s Encrypt. Just type in y, followed by Enter.
Letsencrypt is currently in beta phase. Do you wish to enable SSL now for example.com? Type "y" to continue [n]:y
If Let’s Encrypt setup works successfully, you’ll see the following output:
Let's Encrypt successfully setup for your site Your certificate and chain have been saved at /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem Configuring Nginx SSL configuration Adding /var/www/example.com/conf/nginx/ssl.conf Adding /etc/nginx/conf.d/force-ssl-example.com.conf Added HTTPS Force Redirection for Site http://DOMAIN.TLD Creating Cron Job for cert auto-renewal Reload : nginx [OK] Congratulations! Successfully Configured SSl for Site https://DOMAIN.TLD Your cert will expire within 89 days.
This basic configuration sets up a cron job to renew your certificate before it expires after 90 days.
You can access the root of the WordPress installation via /var/www/example.com/htdocs. Even better, you’ll now be able to visit your new WordPress site via your domain.
How to install EasyEngine: A basic WordPress installation example.
Already have an EasyEngine site?
If you already have a WordPress site running via EasyEngine, you can \add a Let’s Encrypt certificate and reconfigure Nginx—again, with a single command.
$ sudo ee site update example.com --letsencrypt
As with the basic installation in step 2, this will enable a cron job to ensure the certificate is renewed regularly.
Conclusion
You should now be up and running with a SSL-enabled WordPress site, all in just a few commands.
If you want to update the EasyEngine core, simply run ee update.
You can also update your individual sites with new features, such as caching, with the ee site update command:
$ sudo ee site update DOMAIN.TLD --wp --wpfc
