Secure Your Self Hosted Wordpress
update 6/12/2024: this post predates letsencrypt, you should just use that instead: https://letsencrypt.org/
Self hosting WordPress rocks. Unsecured websites do not rock. It does not matter how long or complicated your password is if it is being transmitted in plain text over HTTP. Luckily, it is easy to create a Self Signed certificate and use it on your website. Keep in mind that browsers become very unhappy with Self Signed Certificates and tend to yell at the user. So, if you have a lot of traffic and want your users to feel safe purchase an SSL certificate from a real Certificate Authority. In any case, at the very least you should be using a self signed SSL for all of the admin portions of your site. Here’s how to do it on Debian 7.5 running a standard LAMP stack.
- Create your self signed Certificate by running the following commands sequentially.
mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl
openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -nodes -out /etc/apache2/ssl/wp.pem -keyout /etc/apache2/ssl/wp.key
2. Create a Virtual Host for your website in /etc/apache2/conf.d/yoursite.conf
<VirtualHost 1.2.3.4:443>
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/wp.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/wp.key
DocumentRoot /srv/www/yoursite.com/public_html
<Directory>
AllowOverride All
order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
- Change yoursite.conf to something more meaningful
- Change 1.2.3.4 to the IP of your server, which you can obtain by running ifconfig in a terminal
- Change the document root to your actual document root.
sudo a2enmod ssl4. Restart apache
sudo service apache2 restart
All set! Now, you can navigate to https://yourwebsite.com, confirm the security exception, and administer and view your WordPress site securely.
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- 2024
- Reinstalling Windows at 1am
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- How to Disable Wayland in Debian Testing
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- 21st Century C++ from Communications of the ACM
- Submarines DevCon 2025 Keynote Speech from JoshHaines.com
- How I Use AI: Meet My Promptly Hired Model Intern from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
- DeepSeek from Maggie Appleton
- Digital Reality Digital Shock from Christopher Butler
- 10 habits to help becoming a Debian Maintainer from Optimized by Otto
- Tiny corners from Manuel Moreale RSS Feed
- Build It Yourself from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Pluralistic: America and "national capitalism" (18 Feb 2025)
Today's links America and "national capitalism": How the EU should respond to Trumpism. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've bee…
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow February 18, 2025My Life in Weeks by Gina Trapani
OMG. Life perspective through UI. I freaking love it. Check out My Life in Weeks by Gina Trapani
via Blog – Brad Frost February 18, 2025Argentinian president Javier Milei promotes memecoin that then crashes 95% in apparent $100 million+ rug pull
A tweet from Argentina's president Javier Milei promoted a memecoin called Libra, which he described as a "private project [that] will [be] dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy by funding small Argenti…
via Web3 is Going Just Great February 18, 2025Generated by openring