Create a Sakura Cloud Server and Run WordPress on Ubuntu

This article is a localized edition of the Japanese original. Read the Japanese original

Sakura Cloud is an IaaS cloud service from SAKURA internet, a Japanese hosting company. It is a different service from the same company's "Sakura VPS", with its own contract and control panel. This article walks through creating an Ubuntu server on Sakura Cloud and getting WordPress running on it.

The screen labels are based on the official manual as of November 2026. Prices vary by plan and zone and are shown on the confirmation screen before creation, so check them there.

If you use Sakura VPS instead, see Initial setup for Sakura VPS.

Overview of the steps

1. Prepare an SSH key on your own computer
2. Create the server in the control panel
3. Connect over SSH and set up OS updates, the firewall and swap
4. Install Apache, MySQL and PHP
5. Create the database, then place and install WordPress

1. Prepare an SSH key

Connecting to the server with a public key rather than a password is safer. Create a key pair on your own computer (PowerShell on Windows, or the terminal on macOS or Linux).

ssh-keygen -t ed25519

By default this creates ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 (the private key) and ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub (the public key). What you register on the server is the content of the .pub public key. Never give the private key to anyone.

2. Create the server in the control panel

1. Log in to the control panel, select your project and open "Sakura Cloud"
2. In the zone selection menu at the top left, choose the zone where the server will live
3. Open "Server" in the left menu and click "Add" above the list
4. On the creation screen (the default is "Simple mode"), set the following

When the settings are done, create the server in this order.

1. Click "Create" to open the confirmation screen, check the price with "Show breakdown", then press "Create"
2. When the status shows "Success", creation is complete. Click "Close" to return to the list

After creation, check the assigned IP address in the server list or the server details.

3. Connect over SSH and do the initial setup

In Sakura Cloud's Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS public archive, the admin user is named ubuntu (according to the release notes as of November 2026). Use sudo for tasks that need root privileges.

ssh ubuntu@203.0.113.10

Replace 203.0.113.10 with the IP address of your server. On the first connection you are asked to confirm the host, so type yes.

Update the OS

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

If the kernel was updated, reboot with sudo reboot and connect again.

Set up the firewall

With Ubuntu's ufw, allow only SSH and the web (HTTP and HTTPS). If you enable ufw before allowing SSH, your connection will be cut, so keep to this order.

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 80/tcp
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw status

ufw enable asks for confirmation, so type y. According to the same release notes, fail2ban is enabled in this archive, and a source that fails to log in over SSH five times is refused for 10 minutes. Sakura Cloud also has a "Packet filter" feature that restricts traffic in front of the server.

Create swap

The Ubuntu Server 26.04 LTS public archive has no swap space. On low-memory plans, create a swap file so that MySQL does not stop from running out of memory.

sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab
free -h

4. Install Apache, MySQL and PHP

sudo apt install -y apache2 mysql-server php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-curl php-gd php-intl php-mbstring php-xml php-zip

As of November 2026, the standard Ubuntu 26.04 LTS packages install Apache 2.4, MySQL 8.4 and PHP 8.5. These meet the WordPress recommendations (PHP 8.3 or later, and MySQL 8.0 or later or MariaDB 10.11 or later).

So that WordPress permalink settings can use .htaccess, enable mod_rewrite and configure the document root to read .htaccess.

sudo a2enmod rewrite
printf '<Directory /var/www/html>\n    AllowOverride All\n</Directory>\n' | sudo tee /etc/apache2/conf-available/wordpress.conf
sudo a2enconf wordpress
sudo apachectl configtest
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Because a module was enabled, the change is applied with restart rather than reload.

5. Create the database and install WordPress

Create the database and user

With MySQL on Ubuntu, if you have root privileges on the OS you can log in as the administrator without a password using sudo mysql.

sudo mysql

Run the following at the MySQL prompt. Replace your-strong-password with a password of your own.

CREATE DATABASE wordpress DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'wpuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'wpuser'@'localhost';
EXIT;

MySQL 8 does not accept the GRANT ... IDENTIFIED BY syntax, so create the user (CREATE USER) and grant privileges (GRANT) as separate statements.

Place WordPress

cd /tmp
curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar xzf latest.tar.gz
sudo rm /var/www/html/index.html
sudo cp -a /tmp/wordpress/. /var/www/html/
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html

Extracting latest.tar.gz creates a directory named wordpress, and its contents are copied into the document root, /var/www/html.

Install from the browser

Open http://203.0.113.10/ (your server's IP address) in a browser to see the WordPress installation screen.

1. Choose a language
2. Enter the database name wordpress, the username wpuser, the password you created, and the database host localhost
3. Enter the site title and the administrator's username, password and email address, then install

Avoid easy-to-guess administrator usernames such as admin.

What to do next

• Use your own domain: in the domain's DNS, add an A record pointing to the server's IP address, then change the URLs to the domain under "Settings" → "General" in WordPress
• Switch to HTTPS: once the domain points to the server, get a Let's Encrypt certificate with certbot (sudo apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-apache, then sudo certbot --apache -d example.com)
• Back up: save the WordPress files and database regularly. Sakura Cloud's feature for copying a whole disk (archives) is also available

Summary

• Sakura Cloud is a different service from Sakura VPS; create a server with "Server" → "Add" in the control panel
• Register a public key at creation, and on the Ubuntu archive connect over SSH as the ubuntu user
• Enable ufw only after allowing SSH, and create swap on low-memory plans
• Install Apache, MySQL and PHP with apt, and create the MySQL user with separate CREATE USER and GRANT statements
• Set up WordPress by entering the database details on the browser installation screen

Questions about WordPress? The publisher of this site is based in Japan and replies in Japanese. Contact (Japanese)