In this guide, I’ll walk you through how I set up WordPress on an Ubuntu server on Azure using Nginx and added a custom welcome page to make the site more personal.
Architectural Diagram
Below are the steps I Took:
1. Installed Nginx, PHP, and MySQL
I installed the core components needed to serve WordPress:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx php php-mysql mysql-server -y
2. Downloaded and Set Up WordPress
I downloaded WordPress and extracted it into /var/www/html:
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz
sudo mv wordpress/* /var/www/html/
3. Configured Nginx
I edited the Nginx default configuration to support PHP and WordPress:
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
I made sure to set the index directive like this:
index index.html index.htm index.php;
This ensures my custom index.html is shown before WordPress’s index.php
4. Created a Custom Welcome Page
Inside /var/www/html/, I created an index.html file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Welcome</title>
</head>
<body style="text-align: center; font-family: sans-serif; padding: 50px;">
<h1>Welcome to Folashade's Core Dev Test!</h1>
<p>This is a personal test environment where WordPress is installed.</p>
<a href="/wp-login.php" style="display: inline-block; padding: 10px 20px; background: #0073aa; color: white; text-decoration: none; border-radius: 5px;">Login to WordPress</a>
</body>
</html>
5. Restarted Nginx
To apply the changes:
sudo systemctl restart nginx
Then I go to http://<server-ip> , I see a clean, welcoming landing page.
Clicking the link takes me to the full WordPress setup.
This setup gives me a simple branded homepage while keeping full access to WordPress in the background.