Install phpMyAdmin on WordPress VPS

Access and make changes to your WordPress MySQL database.

Contact HostJane for root access to your VPS.

phpMyAdmin is a free database management tool.

Because WordPress runs directly on the server, there isn’t a simple backend administrative interface where you can access phpMyAdmin as found in other software running WordPress (like cPanel).

Instead, phpMyAdmin must first be installed and then accessed via a standard browser window in Chrome or Firefox.

In this section

Install phpMyAdmin on WordPress VPS

Download phpMyAdmin

Latest version of phpMyAdmin can be downloaded as a zip file to your local computer.

Click the green download button or the .zip file on the top line of the phpMyAdmin latest releases.

Connect with FileZilla

Enter the following information:

Host: sftp://[Your_Server’s_IP]
Username: root
Password: [Your_Server’s_Password] as found in Statistics
Port: 22

Navigate to /var/www/html

Open /html folder:

Upload phpMyAdmin to /html folder

In the left window, navigate to the phpMyAdmin .zip file you downloaded in Step 1.

Double-click it to upload it to your server’s /html folder.

View the uploaded document in the right-hand server window when the 10MB file upload completes:

Unzip phpMyAdmin on the server

You cannot unzip files remotely using FTP.

Login to your server with PuTTY on Windows or an OpenSSH client in linux and MacOS devices to unzip the phpMyAdmin folder.

After logging in, type this command to change directory to /html:

cd /var/www/html

Unzip the file:

unzip phpMyAdmin-X.X.X-all-languages.zip

Replace phpMyAdmin-X.X.X-all-languages.zip with the latest version phpMyAdmin of the one you downloaded.

Press Enter

You will see the phpMyAdmin zip being inflated into a directory folder on your server, and stopping with a lint-query

Change the phpMyAdmin directory name

To protect phpMyAdmin, change the directory name to your chosen name

In this tutorial, we will us: janeadmin

mv phpMyAdmin-4.8.2-all-languages janeadmin

Press Enter.

The cursor will move to the next line, and nothing will have appeared to have happened.

However, if you refresh your FileZilla window, you’ll see a new folder at the top of the tree, janeadmin.

This is visual confirmation the phpMyAdmin folder has been successfully changed.

Create a configuration file for phpMyAdmin

Change the directory of your prompt user to janeadmin

cd janeadmin

Copy config.sample.inc.php and rename the copy to config.inc.php

cp config.sample.inc.php config.inc.php

Now open config.inc.php with nano, the command-line text editor.

nano config.inc.php

You will open the file with nano:

Move the cursor to $cfg[‘blowfish_secret’] = ‘’;

Enter a secret in the ” for blowfish_secret, for example:

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'janedoerocks-2837*2022o6)477sgrg';

Use a random string of numbers, symbols, and letters of at least 32 characters and no more than 46 characters long for your blowfish secret

Write the changes with ctrl + O and press Enter to save the changes

Now exit back to the command line, with ctrl + x

Visit phpMyAdmin in the browser

Pull up a fresh browser window like Chrome, and enter into the address bar:

https://[Your_Server’s_IP]/janeadmin

Make sure you are logged into the server (via OpenSSH or PuTTY) as the root user

Obtain root password

To find out the root password to login to the phpMyAdmin management tool, enter on the CLI:

cat /root/.my.cnf

The phpMyAdmin root password will be displayed.

Enter root credentials into browser:

Username: root Password: [As shown in the terminal shell]

Proceed to enter phpMyAdmin

Secure the phpMyAdmin installation

To ensure authorized users only can access phpMyAdmin in the browser, password secure the login.

In SSH, create an encrypted password by typing:

openssl passwd

For demo purposes, we used: 123456

Don’t use an easy password

Use a strong password generator to choose a secure, random password for your site.

Enter 123456

The terminal returns an encrypted pass for 123456 of: Gc0VLaNLNhXoY

Go to the htpasswd directory:

cd /etc/nginx/htpasswd/

The prompt will change to:

root@host:/etc/nginx/htpasswd/$

Using the nano command-line text editor to create a new file in the directory, such as sizzler

Replace sizzler with your own username

nano sizzler

The new file will open:

Enter your credentials in the format: Username : Encrypted pass

In the above example, we input:

sizzler : Gc0VLaNLNhXoY

Write changes to the file with: ctrl + O and press Enter to save

Now exit with ctrl + x

Change directory again to:

cd /etc/nginx/conf.d

You need to nano edit 2 different (but very similar looking) files in this directory:

wordpress_http.conf wordpress_https.conf

After changing to the /conf.d directory, first edit wordpress_http.conf

nano wordpress_http.conf

Find the line starting:

location ^~ /wp-admin/ {

Change /wp-admin/ to /janeadmin/

Next, move the cursor 2 lines down to find :

auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/htpasswd/wp-admin;

Change /wp-admin/ to sizzler or the username you selected.

Write changes to the file with: ctrl + O and press Enter to save

Now exit with ctrl + x

The final result should look like:

Now make the same edits to the second file: wordpress_https.conf

Finally, restart Nginx to apply changes:

systemctl restart nginx

Congratulations! You have now successfully set up a password screen to login to phpMyAdmin on your server.

In our above example, to login to phpMyAdmin at the security prompt::

Username: sizzler (or your chosen username) Password: 123456 (or your chosen password)

phpMyAdmin is now safely behind locked doors for your use only.