Many people pay hefty monthly subscription fees to have a Website for their Business or Personal use. It is possible to setup up a functional website in your home or small business office in a cost effective way. It will save you money in the long run, and you have total control over the site. The only catch is that you (or someone in your home/team) will have to be a little tech savvy.

Raspberry Pi is a small Single Board Computer (SBC), which is available in different forms for low prices, some as low as US$ 10. These articles will particularly be referring to Raspberry Pi 2B that sells for US$ 35. Your circumstance may lead you to more expensive setup. I would also be using an USB Thumb Drive (16GB), that costs about US$ 8 on Amazon. Almost all homes and small offices already have an Broad-Band Internet connection, so I will not factor in that cost. Plus there will be a cost for the Wall Adapter, Case, SD Card and Heat Sink.

• One of Raspberry Pi 2B, Raspberry Pi 3B or Raspberry Pi 4B
• Heat Sink (Optional for 2B)
• A Plastic or Aluminum Case for your Model of Raspberry Pi
• Wall Power Adapter
• SD Card (8 GB or higher)
• USB Thumb Drive (16 GB)
• Internet Connection: Connected 24 Hours 7 days a Week – Minimum Download speed of 50 Mbps, Minimum Upload speed of 50 Mbps.

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So your total lifetime expense for the Web-Site will be at the least US$ 80, using free versions of most software items. For a faster site you may opt for Raspberry Pi 4B 8 GB Model but that is a bit more expensive then the other models. You may also opt for paid domain names, non-free SSL Certificates, and paid versions of WordPress-plugins, those will be extra costs if you go that path. In this series of articles we will be using free versions of what ever is possible, if you want you can replace those items with paid versions later on.

The beautiful thing about Raspberry Pi is that it is very quite (usually no fan coolers), consumes very little electrical power (Pi 2B needs 2 Amperes at 5 Volts = 10 Watts). In this Web-Server use-case it does not need a Monitor screen to run, it can run headless. You can use you MacBook, Laptop or Desktop to configure or monitor it via network connection using SSH Protocol.

This series of articles will guide you through to set up a WordPress Site on your Raspberry Pi. WordPress is a very popular Open-Source, Blogging Application written in PHP Programming Language, designed to run on a Web Site Server. Over the years it has seen many Plugins developed for it and a huge community of developers, vendors and users . WordPress is also used to sell products, services, and many Shopping-cart plugins are available for it. Many web sites around the world are executing in WordPress Application in the background.

This series of articles will be made up of the following parts:

Part 1 – Setup the Pi (Coming Soon)

Part 2 – Install Apache2 – (Coming Soon)

Part 3 – Install PHP – (Coming Soon)

Part 4 – Install MariaDB/MySQL – (Coming Soon)

Part 5 – Setup Domain Name – (Coming Soon)

Part 6 – Obtain and Install SSL Certificate – (Coming Soon)

Part 7 – Install WordPress – (Coming Soon)

Part 8 – Basic Configuration and Security in WordPress – (Coming Soon)

Part 9 – Secure Raspberry Pi with fail2Ban – (Coming Soon)

Part 10 (Bonus) – Setup Private DNS Server – Having multiple sites in Apache – (Coming Soon)

Part 11 (Bonus) – Backup and Remote Private Cloud Sync – (Coming Soon)

(This article is a work in progress – Please do re-visit later when it has been completed).

This is the first part of the article series about setting up a cost effective web site in your home or small business office.

To start with you need to have the following items:

• One of Raspberry Pi 2B, Raspberry Pi 3B or Raspberry Pi 4B
• Heat Sink (Optional for 2B)
• A Plastic or Aluminum Case for your Model of Raspberry Pi
• Wall Power Adapter
• SD Card (8 GB or higher)
• USB Thumb Drive (16 GB)

In this article we will look at how to prepare the SD-Card for initial boot. Then we will connect to raspberry pi using SSH protocol. Then we will assign fixed IP address to Wired and Wifi network settings. Then we will prepare the USB thumb drive for use with raspberry pi. After that we will mount the USB thumb Drive to a fixed location so even if we unplug and re-plug the USB drive or if the Pi is rebooted, it automatically re-mounts to the same location every time, as long as the USB drive is not re-formatted.

Download the Operating System (OS)

The Raspberry Pi can run different operating systems some of which may not be listed on the official Pi Operating Systems page. This series of articles will be giving instructions for the official OS for Raspberry Pi only, the “Raspberry Pi OS” also known as “Raspbian”. You can download the OS from the Official Page. You can download any of the following:

• Raspberry Pi OS with Desktop and software
• Raspberry Pi OS with Desktop
• Raspberry Pi OS Lite

The first 2 options use more SD Card space and include a Graphical User Interface (GUI). But since we plan to use our Pi as a “headless” server without a directly connected monitor – it may improve response time of your Pi, if you do not use one of the first two. The 3rd option (Raspberry Pi OS Lite), if you do not plan to use the GUI, will take less space on the SD Card, and may give better response times. I will try to provide all the commands that we will need in these articles. On my Raspberry Pi I have installed the 2nd option “Raspberry Pi OS with Desktop” as I do sometimes connect a monitor or use VNC Viewer for a remote GUI Desktop session.

Copy the OS to SD Card

Prepare SD Card for first boot

a. Enable SSH

b. Setup Wired (Ethernet) Connection IP Address

c. Setup Wifi Connection (if needed)

Initial Login

Prepare USB Thumb Drive

a. Format as ext4 format (recommended)

b. Format as FAT32 (if desired)

Setup USB Mount in Pi “fstab” file