Step-by-step Guide on How to Install and Run WordPress on Synology NAS

Welcome to the world of enhanced web hosting and data management! If you want to leverage the power and flexibility of a Synology NAS (Network Attached Storage) for your website, you’ve come to the right place. This step-by-step guide is tailored for enthusiasts and professionals who wish to harness the robust features of Synology NAS for running WordPress, the world’s most popular content management system.

With all the recent news about cloud storage services like Amazon’s S3 and Google Drive, it’s easy to think that a NAS isn’t necessary. However, there are still plenty of reasons to have your own NAS, and in this guide, I will show you how to install and run a WordPress site on your own NAS. Regardless of what you are using the Synology NAS for, installing WordPress on the Synology NAS is extremely easy.

How to host a website on Synology Nas: What are the requirements?

When you own a Synology NAS, which I assume you wouldn’t read this article, you are good to go to install WordPress on Synology.

However, there are a few things you need to pay some attention to.

• Would you like to make the website accessible from the Internet? If yes, you need to purchase a domain name (example.com)
• Port forwarding is necessary for ports 80 and 443.
• You can use your Synology as a router or a separate router/firewall in two scenarios. In the first scenario, you would need a Synology with two ethernet ports, one connected to the internet modem and the other to the internal network. The second use case needs only one ethernet port, which is my preferred setup. I highly recommend a firewall if you plan to make your WordPress on Synology accessible from the Internet.
• I recommend a Synology NAS with at least two hard drives in the setup of RAID1 (hard drive mirroring). Don’t plan to host WordPress on Synology with only one disk.
• I recommend the DS723+. It has an AMD Ryzen R1600 CPU, 2GB of system memory, and a free slot to expand to 32GB (16GBx2). I have a separate article about which Synology NAS to buy.

How do you install WordPress on a Synology NAS?

There are a few different ways to install WordPress on Synology NAS. This guide will show you how to install it using the Package Center.

So, it is time to log in to your Synology and go to the package center. A good practice is to check beforehand if a new DSM update is available.

I log in with the username ‘Admin’ in this example for easier understanding. However, Synology recommends disabling the admin default user and using another username for security purposes.

Unfortunately, the WordPress package offered in the Synology distro is not the latest.

Step 1: Install the WordPress package

Click the ‘Install’ button

The installer will also install all the required packages it needs to run.

Now a few necessary steps will follow, and you must enter some login information.

Please note them down. It’s crucial in case later you need to access the database.

Click ‘YES’

Step 2: MariaDB

Set a password for MariaDB. I would leave the port as it is.

Step 3: Set up WordPress on Synology

Set up WordPress on Synology. Enter the credentials of MariaDB for the user ‘root’. You will later use these credentials for PHPmyadmin to access all your WordPress databases. In theory, you could use another username here. However, I don’t recommend it. Instead of changing the username ‘root,’ I recommend setting up another user for MariaDB later.

Step 4: Set up WordPress Database

Enter the credentials for your database installation. The installer will set up a database on MariaDB for WordPress.

WordPress is now installed!

If you go to the package center you notice the WordPress is running and also on which volume it is installed. In my case, I installed WordPress on Volume 1.

Step 5: Log in to WordPress on Synology (last step)

It’s time to fire up WordPress and login to the backend dashboard.

usually, it is the address http://name of your NAS/wordpress/wp-admin

Synology creates a web folder ‘wordpress’

Fill in the information, as for the username please do not use ‘admin’ or ‘administrator’ and also use a strong password. See my article Harden WordPress.

I recommend ticking ‘discourage search engines from indexing this site. I would untick it when you are ready to present your website to the world.

WordPress is installed and ready. Enjoy!! 🙂

You can now manage your WordPress site directly from your Synology NAS. Install any plugin you want from the WordPress repository, or customize your site with themes and plugins from third-party sources.

I love the Kadence or Astra theme together with the Elementor page builder.

Install a Letsencrypt SSL certificate to your Synology

If you want to secure your WordPress with an SSL certificate, Synology makes obtaining a certificate from Letsencrypt easy. Follow my article Synology SSL certificate. Letsencrypt uses port 80 to verify the domain. Make sure the port is open at the firewall. I mentioned it above under requirements.

Go then to Settings, and assign the SSL certificate to the system default

Lastly, go to your WordPress Dashboard and ensure the WordPress Address URL and Site Address URL are set to https.

You should see a padlock in the browser address bar if all goes well. Synology will automatically renew the Letsencrypt certificate.

Install the package phpMyAdmin

It’s not required to install phpMyAdmin, however, I recommend it in case you need to manage or modify the database. It’s a web GUI. You find the package in the packager center and it is easy to install, with no wizard to follow.

Accessing phpMyAdmin, http://name of the NAS/phpmyadmin

To log in enter the credentials you entered in step 3.

What are the benefits of running WordPress on Synology NAS?

There are several benefits to running WordPress on Synology NAS. Perhaps the most obvious is that it provides a fast and reliable way to host your website. Additionally, since WordPress is already pre-installed on many Synology NAS devices, it is quick and easy to set it up.

Another great benefit of using a Synology NAS to host your WordPress site is that you can take advantage of the many features and applications that Synology offers. For example, you can use tools like Synology Directory Server to run your domain or download packages like Photo Station to manage and share your photos online.

Finally, by running WordPress on a Synology NAS, you gain the peace of mind that comes with knowing your website is always accessible and backed up.

What are the drawbacks of running WordPress on a Synology NAS?

There are a few potential drawbacks of running WordPress on a Synology NAS:

1. WordPress may be slower and more unstable on a Synology NAS than if WordPress was running locally.
2. WordPress is installed in a subdirectory. (see my other article)
3. It would be best if you secured WordPress yourself. (see my other article)
4. It can be more difficult to troubleshoot problems. There is no support available. You are basically on your own
5. You cannot use the WordPress upgrade feature. To upgrade WordPress, you must wait until a new version is available in the package center. Synology does not upgrade WordPress immediately when a new release is public.

I use this Synology for WordPress.

Please also read my separate article, “Optimize WordPress on Synology” I look at some aspects for a better WordPress experience (performance, security, access) on Synology. You can visit my Synology WordPress website here.

Technical Aspects / Questions and Answers

In the next part, we will dive into more technical aspects and how you can adjust WordPress on Synology for an even better experience and eliminate some of the mentioned drawbacks.

Why am I not able to upgrade WordPress from the Dashboard?

I have no idea why Synology decided to disable upgrade possibilities. So let us find out what the reason is. Let’s go to the File Station (on the Synology dashboard), web-packages, folder ‘WordPress’, and look for the file ‘wp-config.php. right-click and open it with the text editor – I use the text editor from the package center – We are looking for this in ‘wp-config-php’

define( ‘AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED’, true );

It’s not there, so weird why we cannot upgrade WordPress from the dashboard. But wait, in ‘wp-config-php’, there is a reference to another file.

require_once DIR . ‘/syno-wp-config-custom.php’;

Right, a file ‘syno-wp-config-custom.php’ exists too. Open it with the text editor, and there you will see updates are disabled.

If we are trying to modify the line from ‘true’ to ‘false’ and save the file, we get the message

Sorry, the user account was not assigned the proper privileges to perform this action.

What is the reason why I cannot modify WordPress files on Synology?

Well, in most cases, we are logged in to Synology NAS with an admin account. We need to investigate further what’s going on. Right-click the folder ‘WordPress’ in File Station and click on properties

We notice the owner is a new user called ‘WordPress’. Unfortunately, it is not so simple, and we could add our account and give us write permission. The permissions you see here are only for the application ‘File Station’. In addition, when you go to the Control Panel, Users & Group, you will not see a new user called ‘WordPress’

We have to ssh now to the Synology NAS and look under the hood. I use Putty for Windows or Termius for MacOS. (see my article on how to use ssh)

Type in the below command, and the Synology NAS will list all users. We noticed, indeed a user ‘WordPress’ was created.

cat /etc/passwd

We can do the same for groups

cat /etc/group

Interesting a group ‘WordPress’ was set up too.

Next, we navigate to the WordPress folder and have a look at which user and group is the owner of the folder ‘WordPress’

cd /volume1/web_packages

Please note: WordPress is installed in my case on volume1. This might be different in your case.

The owner of the main folder ‘WordPress’ and each subfolder and file is the user ‘WordPress,” and the group is ‘HTTP’. Looking at the permission, we noticed that all others have only ‘read’ permissions.

This is the answer to why we cannot edit the WordPress files.

I refer you to my articles about Users & Groups, and file permissions.

How can I edit files in WordPress on Synology NAS?

The easiest way is to

• make your login username a member of the group ‘http’

The command below adds the user ‘Admin’ to the http group

synogroup –add http Admin

The next step is to edit the file ‘syno-wp-config-custom.php’ with the vi editor

vi syno-wp-config-custom.php

We need to amend ‘false’ to ‘true’ and also delete the line highlighted in yellow.

Press the letter i to change to insert mode to make the changes. When you are finished, press the ESC key followed by:wq. That’s the command to save the changes and exit the vi editor.

Go back to your WordPress dashboard, and now it should change. Automatic updates are enabled and scheduled.

WordPress on Synology will update to the latest version automatically.

Bottom line

In this article, I have walked you through installing WordPress on Synology. I also showed you how to install phpmyadmin as an additional package. Finally, I weighed the pros and cons of doing so. Following my instructions, you should now be able to install WordPress on Synology and modify it to get the latest WordPress version automatically.

Thanks for reading! Questions or comments? Let me know in the comments below or email me at info@edywerder.ch