How to Install WordPress on Vultr

Vultr is a popular alternative to DigitalOcean, offering affordable servers located around the globe. Their High Frequency Compute instances are noticeably fast and are well suited for WordPress hosting.

Before you begin, you’ll need to sign up for SpinupWP and click Spin Up a New Server from the dashboard if you haven’t already.

Adding Vultr as Your Server Provider

Let’s go ahead and connect a Vultr VPS to SpinupWP. Before you start this process, you will need to sign up for a Vultr account (<<<Use this link to receive $100 in Vultr credits if you’re new to Vultr) if you don’t already have one.

Once signed in, click Deploy Server. When adding a new cloud instance via Vultr:

  1. Select an instance type. We recommend Cloud Compute or Optimized Cloud Compute.
  2. Select a Server Location where the server will be hosted.
  3. Select Ubuntu 22.04 x64 as the Server Image.
  4. Select a Server Size, which will determine how many sites you can host on the server and the amount of traffic it will be able to handle. Servers can always be upgraded to a larger size later from the Vultr dashboard but the server will be offline while it resizes. See our Server Size doc for guidance on selecting a server size.
  5. Add your SSH key to the server.
  6. Enter a Server Hostname & Label for the server.

Vultr instance options

Vultr offers several additional features for your consideration:

  • You’ll have the option to enable IPv6 which adds an IPv6 address to the server in addition to the default IPv4 address.
  • You can choose to enable Auto Backups for an additional monthly fee. These are server backups and are not to be confused with SpinupWP’s site backups feature which backs up site files and database, rather than the entire server. If you choose to enable this feature, you’ll be billed directly by Vultr.
  • Vultr also offers DDOS protection.
  • You can choose to enable Cloud-init, a service to help with customizing servers. You don’t need this when using SpinupWP.
  • For no extra cost, you can enable Virtual Private Clouds, which can be nice if you’re also using a Vultr Managed Database as an external database.

If you have a post-provision script you’d like to enter, you can add it in the Startup Script section. This is a one-time script which will be run on the server once the provision process has completed. This is handy if you have any additional packages you know you will want to install on the server.

Vultr will mark the server as running once it completes the installation and kicks off the first boot process. Note that the first boot can take a minute or two to fully finalize the installation. During this time, you won’t be able to connect to the server via SSH. If you wish, you could use their “console” tool to observe the process and see when it completes. However, when it finishes it won’t show the login prompt until you press enter after the processes all finish.

Once the server has been created, copy the server’s IP address. SSH to the server using the root user:

ssh root@192.248.156.219

As you added your SSH key during the instance creation, the connection to the server should succeed. If not, double-check your connection settings.

Head over to SpinupWP and click Spin Up a New Server followed by Use Another Provider, select Vultr, and click I’ve already provisioned a fresh server. Enter the server’s public IP address and select Public Key authentication. The remaining options can be left as their default values.

SpinupWP provision server

Copy the command provided by SpinupWP into the SSH terminal session. Confirm the connection by clicking Next in SpinupWP. Enter the server’s hostname, desired timezone, and select the database server to install.

Click Provision Server to begin the provisioning process.

SpinupWP Provisioning

SpinupWP will take care of installing the latest stable server software (Nginx, PHP-FPM, Redis) required for hosting WordPress sites. The following docs will help you understand more about how the server is set up and configured:

Once the server has finished provisioning, your Vultr server is ready for WordPress sites or other web apps.

Next steps

To continue your setup and add a site, see our Getting Started doc.

What to expect after adding a site? You’ll have the option to configure your server and sites to your needs via the SpinupWP dashboard.

You’ll be able to quickly enable page caching. When enabled, SpinupWP configures full page caching, essentially turning your site into a static site and dramatically improving the load time of your site.

You can also toggle on an SSL certificate to enable HTTPS. This generates a free Let’s Encrypt certificate so you don’t have to manually manage this yourself. If you’d prefer to use a custom SSL certificate, you’ll have the opportunity to upload that instead.

If you’re looking to add rewrite rules or prevent PHP scripts from being executed in the uploads folder, the Nginx settings steps will cover that.

We’ll also cover enabling SFTP & SSH access to your site and setting up site backups.

SpinupWP can take care of automated daily site backups which include full backups of your site files (media, themes and plugins). You’ll have the option to backup to Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, Akamai (formerly Linode), Google Cloud Storage, Wasabi or Backblaze B2.

Follow our Getting Started Guide for step by step instructions for all of the above mentioned features and more.