Instant Server Setup - phpMyAdmin with Nginx on an Ubuntu 20.04 Server

This process involves installing and configuring a web server (Nginx) along with a database management system (MySQL) and a popular PHP application (phpMyAdmin) on an Ubuntu 20.04 server.

how To Install and Secure phpMyAdmin with Nginx on an Ubuntu 20.04 Server

The steps are as follows:

1. Update the package list: This command makes sure that your system has access to the latest versions of software packages.
2. Install Nginx: Nginx is a web server software that can handle high traffic websites. It's a popular alternative to Apache.
3. Install MySQL server: MySQL is a widely-used relational database management system that stores and manages data.
4. Install PHP and required modules: PHP is a server-side scripting language used to create dynamic web content. The packages being installed here add support for common PHP features like database connectivity and XML parsing.
5. Install phpMyAdmin: phpMyAdmin is a popular web-based application used to manage MySQL databases. here we will try to install phpMyAdmin package directly by downloading package from source.
6. Configure Nginx to work with PHP: This step tells Nginx how to handle PHP scripts. It configures Nginx to pass PHP scripts to the PHP FastCGI Process Manager (FPM) for execution.

Restart Nginx to apply the changes: Restarting the Nginx service applies the configuration changes made.

After completing all these steps, you should be able to access phpMyAdmin by visiting http://your_server_ip/phpmyadmin in your web browser.

All commands are well tested.

Get a Server from Top Cloud Server Providers

1. DigitalOcean.com - Get $100 Credit Free for 60 days
2. hetzner.cloud - Get €20 Credit Free ( cheapest)
3. vultr.com - Get $100 Credit Free

Step 1 : Install Nginx

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx

Step 2 : install MySQL

sudo apt install mysql-server

• setting MySQL root user password to login in phpMyadmin

sudo mysql

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'newpassword';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

next time to login again in MySQL using command line use this command:

sudo mysql -u root -p

Step 3 : install php 8.0 and modules

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get update

sudo apt install php8.0-fpm
sudo apt install php8.0-intl
sudo apt install php8.0-mbstring
sudo apt-get install -y php8.0-cli php8.0-common php8.0-mysql php8.0-zip php8.0-gd php8.0-mbstring php8.0-curl php8.0-xml php8.0-bcmath
sudo service php8.0-fpm restart

php -v

Step 4 : installing phpMyadmin

Change Directory to : cd /var/www/html Download phpMyadmin zip file from official site and unzip them

cd /var/www/html/

wget https://files.phpmyadmin.net/phpMyAdmin/5.2.1/phpMyAdmin-5.2.1-all-languages.zip

apt install unzip

unzip phpMyAdmin-5.2.1-all-languages.zip

rename the unzipped phpMyAdmin-5.2.1-all-languages folder to phpmyadmin and give permission

mv /var/www/html/phpMyAdmin-5.2.1-all-languages  /var/www/html/phpmyadmin

sudo chown -Rf www-data.www-data /var/www/html/phpmyadmin/

setting up phpMyAdmin secret passphrase? blowfish_secret

Step 5: change the Nginx default file /etc/nginx/sites-available with this:

server {
	listen 80 default_server;
	listen [::]:80 default_server;

	
	root /var/www/html;

	# Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
	index index.php index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

	# Your Server ip Address
	server_name 127.0.0.1;

	location / {
		# First attempt to serve request as file, then
		# as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
		try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
	}
	location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }


}

restart the Nginx

sudo systemctl restart nginx

enabling ufw firewalls command

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'
sudo ufw app info OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 22/tcp
sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw allow 80/udp
sudo ufw allow 443/udp
sudo ufw allow 22
sudo ufw allow 80
sudo ufw allow 443
sudo ufw allow 25

sudo ufw disable
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw status

don't forget to like and subscribe.