The LAMP stack — Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP — powers a large portion of the web, including WordPress, Laravel, and Drupal. Ubuntu 26.04 ships with PHP 8.5, giving you a modern base to build on. This guide sets up a production-ready stack using Apache with PHP-FPM, secures it with a Let's Encrypt certificate, and verifies the full setup with a PHP page that reads from MySQL. By the end, you'll have a fully operational LAMP server ready to host web applications.

Install Apache

Apache is available directly from Ubuntu 26.04's default APT repository.

1. Update the APT package index:

$ sudo apt update

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2. Install Apache:

$ sudo apt install apache2 -y

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3.…