My daughter has her own Wordpress.com blog where she posts articles about whatever she finds interesting. A few days back, she asked me if she could have a ISP-hosted WordPress blog, as she now wants have more control over things like themes and plugins etc. Before investing any money into it, I wanted to see just how much interest is there really. As I have a couple of Synology boxes, I thought maybe she should start with a WordPress blog on one of them and practice. If everything works out well, moving the content to another site is not a problem anyway.
With that in mind, I installed WordPress on one of my Synology boxes. It’s not rocket science but still, here is a quick post about the steps involved in case you want to do it.
There are a couple of prerequisites before you install WordPress on a Synology so let’s go through those first, otherwise it just gets annoying. If you don’t already have “Web Station” enabled, you need to enable that first. Go to “Main Menu” and click on “Web Station”. Once that’s enabled, go to “Control Panel”, then to the “Web Services” utility and “Enable Web Station” by ticking the box next to it. Click “Apply” to apply the configuration. Review other options but they’re not required for this installation.
Doing so creates the required folder structure on the file system, as shown in the screenshot below:
Next step is to install “MariaDB”, the next prerequisite. Go to “Package Center” again and search for “MariaDB”. A number of packages come up but click on “Install” for MariaDB.
If all is well, it should install silently. Now we’re ready to install WordPress. Go to “Package Center” again and this time, search for “WordPress” and once it shows, click on the “Install” button.
The next screen shows up which requires you to enter your MySQL password. Now if you have changed the default MySQL password on your Synology, enter that password. Otherwise, unfortunately, it’s blank.
Click “Next” to continue. The confirmation screen comes up. Click “Apply” to install WordPress.
If all has been well so far, it should complete successfully. After install, click on “Open” to go to the initial configuration page or if you want to do it later, the default URL is:
http://<FQDN or IP Address of Synology Box>/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php
Initial configuration is pretty straight-forward so I won’t go into that but it’s that famous “five minute installation” that WordPress has. Just choose the right language for yourself, site name, user name and password and you’re done!
I must say that after installing it, I figured that I can also use my other Synology to have a test WordPress install, to play with blog themes, categories and content etc. Very often, we bloggers find ourselves in a situation where you want to try out different options but are afraid of service disruption. Well, if you have a Synology box, install WordPress and develop the blog to your heart’s content. Once happy, roll the changes out to your live blog with confidence and minimal disruption! 🙂
Hi Ather
Thank you very much for that guide and it helped a lot. I am having one question though. What am i doing wrong if when i do the Step to open and the famous install should start i only get a blank space? The Url will be looking like this http:///wordpress instead of what you described.
Hope you have an input on how to fix this.
Thank you for your time in advance and have a great day
Cheers
Al
Hi Al
http:///wordpress should be the site address, which will be blank initially as no configuration has been done yet. That’s why, initially you have to go through that simple install screen on http:///wordpress/wp-admin/install.php You’ll know if you have or haven’t done that step already as if you have, then it’ll tell you so. Otherwise, the configuration screens come up.
After those initial questions, it’ll prepare the site for you and then the address above should work.
Hope this helps!
Ather
Hi Ather, thanks for the reply. I had to upload content into the WEB Folder on the Synology Box. At least then it worked. Thanks again, Al
Hi Al,
That’s unusual as normally, one doesn’t have to do anything and there’s a default wordpress home page installed. Maybe something went wrong during the install. Anyway, all is well that ends well. Glad you got it working in the end. 🙂
Ather
Hi,Arther
I was looking for help to see the website online and came across your post. I already have made my website with wordpress, but not sure which url to provide my friends so they can see it.
I provided http://synology ip address/wordpress/
It doesn’t work. what could be wrong? do i need to follow extra steps to see it online?
Your blog is good. I am sure it’s going to help many beginners like me.Thank you in advance.
Archana.
Hi Archana
It seems that you’re trying to give your friends access to your wordpress installation but your Synology website is behind your router and the firewall on it is preventing it from being accessed. If so, there are some additional steps you will have to do.
Firstly, you’ll need to setup something called a “Port Forwarding” rule in your router. Every router is different so you might need to consult its documentation see how it’s done, although, it’s not that difficult if your router has the capability. What we’re talking about is to redirect your friends’ “web” traffic to your Synology box (you already know the IP address of it). Once that’s set up, you need to tell your friends the “external” IP address of your connection i.e. the one visible to the outside world. Your router should be able to tell your this in its connection settings. Again, the documentation should help you with that.
A good thread explaining the process is here: http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=191&t=67808
Hope this helps!
Ather
Ather, great you did that. It helps better than the stuff Synology is providing. Thank you very much!
Thanks Mark! 🙂
Hi,
I installed wordpress successfully, but when I start it for the first time via http:///wordpress, it redirects me to DMS admin login page https://:5000. So I can’t setup wordpress. Any ideas why this happens?
Hi,
I installed wordpress successfully, but when I start it for the first time via http://synology-ip/wordpress, it redirects me to DMS page again https://synology-ip:5000. So I can’t setup wordpress. Any ideas why this happens?
Hi Manfred,
The only reason I can think of is if the installation is corrupt in some way and the browser is not able to get to index.php in the “wordpress” folder. If it can’t find the file it’s looking for then I believe the browser is redirected to the DSM login page.
Check if you have a folder \web\wordpress and an index.php inside. If they’re there, then look for other missing files or remove the package, check it’s completely gone and try again.
Hope this helps!
Hi,
Thanks for your reply. I checked the \web\wordpress folder and everything seems to be there. There is an index.php.
I think it is somehow related to what is described in this posting: https://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?t=21242
I do have an index.html in my \web root folder though, so I don’t understand the redirec to DSM. Could be that somewhere an error occurs and it redirects to DSM in this case as you mentioned.
hi friend thank you for the article I have a question how to change http://synology ip address/wordpress/ to my domain? can you please explain me ?
Hey Ather,
thank you for your post.
I have a similar issue as Archana has stated before.
I have set up all requirements to run WordPress on my Synology (MariaDB, PHPmyadmin, Port forwarding etc.).
However I don’t know how to create a valid URL/Domain like “example.com”, which I can forward to my friends. Yet, I just have access to my WordPress via local network by using 192.168.x.x/wordpress. It either does not sounds good and it gives not a permission to open it from outside the network.
Well, it is pointess if WordPress only exists in my own network. How can I fix this problem? Do I need a external Domain name from a host? If,yes how can I connect it to my Synology?
The goal is to be able to spread my WordPress to the world of internet.
Thank you in advance!!!
Hi, If you haven’t yet solved the external access problem, you might be interested in my blog at http://synologywordpress.blogspot.co.uk/ where I go into the details of how I sorted out my external access.
Hope this helps,
Robert
It’s actually a nice and useful piece of information. I’m glad that
you shared this useful info with us. Please keep us informed like this.
Thanks for sharing.
Hello. I followed your instructions but when installing it said “Error connecting to the database” Did I do something wrong? Thank you!
Though this may not help you, I did quite a detailed blog about my experiences with Synology . .
http://synologywordpress.blogspot.com/
Hope it might help.