How to setup VPS with LiteSpeed and MariaDB for Wordpress

If your website feels slow, you might be losing money. According to Google's research on mobile speed, around half of visitors leave if a page takes more than three seconds to load. 

On the internet today, speed isn’t just nice to have — it’s a ranking factor, a user experience boost, and often the difference between a sale and a bounce.

That’s where LiteSpeed and its powerful caching engine LSCache come in. LiteSpeed is a high-performance web server designed for faster load times, improved scalability, and full Apache compatibility. LSCache, on the other hand, provides deep, CMS-level caching that significantly reduces page load times and server resource usage.

This guide walks you through setting up and configuring LiteSpeed + LSCache and MariaDB in VPS, using best practices for 2025 to optimize your VPS setup.

Prerequisites

Before getting started, make sure you have the following in place:

• A system running Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 LTS (VPS or local server)

• Root or a user account with sudo privileges

• Basic familiarity with the Linux terminal

Optional:

• A domain name pointing to your server’s IP, recommended if you plan to enable HTTPS later.

• Install a few helpful tools if missing, these make downloads, archiving, and firewall setup easier:

Step 1 — Install OpenLiteSpeed

We’ll begin by installing OpenLiteSpeed, the web server that will power your CMS.

1. Update your server packages

Before installing, it’s best practice to refresh your package index so Ubuntu knows about the latest versions available:

2. Add the LiteSpeed repository

OpenLiteSpeed isn’t included in Ubuntu’s default repositories, so you need to add LiteSpeed’s official repo and key:

This script automatically detects your Ubuntu version (22.04 / 24.04) and configures the correct source list.ssh 

3. Install OpenLiteSpeed

Now install the free, open-source version of LiteSpeed. This includes the core web server and the admin interface:

Once installed, enable the service and start it automatically at boot:

You can confirm it’s running with:

You should see output similar to:

(Press Q to exit the status view.)

4. Access the WebAdmin Console

LiteSpeed comes with a built-in web admin interface for managing virtual hosts, PHP settings, and more.

Open your browser and visit:

(Replace <server-ip> with the public IP address of your server.)

You should see a login screen like the one below:

5. Create Admin Credentials

Before logging in, you must create your admin username and password.

Run this setup script and follow the prompts:

After that, you can log in to the WebAdmin console using the credentials you just set.

6. Allow Access Through the Firewall (if needed)

If you can’t reach the WebAdmin panel, it might be blocked by your firewall.

Run the following to open the necessary ports for LiteSpeed (7080 for admin, 8088 for default web pages):

Then reload your firewall rules:

At this point, LiteSpeed should be fully installed and accessible from your browser.

Step 2 — Install PHP and Database Support

We’ll now set up PHP and a database server, which are required to run WordPress.

1. Install PHP 8.3 and required extensions

LiteSpeed uses its own optimized version of PHP, known as lsphp.

Run the following command to install PHP 8.3 along with the most common extensions needed for CMS platforms:

Note: On newer Ubuntu systems (24.04 and later), some PHP extensions such as json, mbstring, and zip are already built into the PHP core or included in lsphp83-common, so they don’t need to be installed separately.

Once installed, LiteSpeed will automatically detect lsphp83 when serving dynamic content.

2. Install and secure MariaDB

Next, install MariaDB, a drop-in replacement for MySQL that powers most open-source CMS databases:

After installation, it’s best practice to secure the database by removing test users and setting a root password:

Note for first-time installations:

When you see the MariaDB root password prompt (as shown in the screenshot), just press Enter to continue, since a fresh installation doesn’t have a root password yet.

Follow the prompts with these recommended responses:

• Switch to unix_socket authentication: n

• Change the root password: n (skip if already set)

• Remove anonymous users: y

• Disallow remote root login: y

• Remove test database: y

• Reload privilege tables: y

At this stage, both PHP and MariaDB are installed and ready, and your server is prepared to host WordPress.

Step 3 — Configure Virtual Host for WordPress

A virtual host tells LiteSpeed where to find your website files and how to serve them. We’ll now create a virtual host named main that points to /var/www/html — the directory that will later contain your WordPress files.

1. Create the Web Root Directory

First, create a directory to hold your website files.

Run this command:

Now confirm the directory exists:

You should see an output similar to this:

Next, set ownership and permissions so the LiteSpeed process can access it.

Run each command separately:

2. Add a New Virtual Host

Log in to WebAdmin at http://<server-ip>:7080.

1. On the left sidebar navigate to Virtual Hosts → Add.

2. Enter the following values:

   1. Virtual Host Name: main

   2. Virtual Host Root (vhRoot): /usr/local/lsws/conf/vhosts/main

   3. Config File: /usr/local/lsws/conf/vhosts/main/vhconf.conf

3. Leave other options default. Set:

   1. Follow Symbolic Link = Yes

   2. Enable Scripts/ExtApps = Yes

   3. Restrained = No

5. If WebAdmin reports that vhconf.conf does not exist, click Create, then Save.

3. Edit the Virtual Host Configuration File

Now we’ll set the document root and enable .htaccess rewriting.

Open the config file with Nano:

Paste the following lines into the file:

Save your changes and exit.

This tells LiteSpeed:

• The website’s root directory is /var/www/html.

• It should serve index.php or index.html by default.

• It should read WordPress rewrite rules from .htaccess.

4. Map the Listener to the Virtual Host 

By default, OpenLiteSpeed’s default listener points to the Example vhost. We’ll now connect the new host main instead.

1. In WebAdmin, navigate to: Listeners → Default → Virtual Host Mappings

2. Delete the existing mapping to Example (click the trash icon).

3. Click Add, and enter:

   1. Virtual Host: main

   2. Domains: *

4. Click Save.

5. Perform a Graceful Restart using the WebAdmin top-right icon, or run:

5. Verify the Configuration

Now you can test that LiteSpeed is serving pages correctly.

Create a simple HTML file inside your web root:

Restart the LiteSpeed service to apply all configuration changes:

Then open your browser and visit:

You should see the message:

Once confirmed, remove the test file to keep your directory clean:

You now have a working virtual host configuration. Your server is ready to set up WordPress on this VPS server.

How to set up WordPress on the VPS? Check our blog post!