Title: understanding initial configuration
Last modified: August 19, 2016

---

# understanding initial configuration

 *  [flipside](https://wordpress.org/support/users/flipside/)
 * (@flipside)
 * [15 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/understanding-initial-configuration/)
 * **Short version**
    After the initial install I needed to make a symbolic link
   to get my site working:
 *     ```
       ln -s /usr/share/wordpress /var/www/www.mysite.com/wordpress
       {i.e. ln -s <wordpress installation directory> <document root> }
       ```
   
 * **Details**
    Before making the above link, I was seeing these errors in the apache
   log when I tried to access the site:
 * `File does not exist: /var/www/wp-content, referer: http://www.mysite.com/wordpress/`
 * The virtual host is set up like this:
 *     ```
       <VirtualHost *:80>
               Servername www.mysite.com
               ServerAlias mysite.com
               DocumentRoot /var/www/www.mysite.com
               etc.
       ```
   
 * After the initial install, /var/www had these two links in it:
 *     ```
       www.mysite.com => /usr/share/wordpress
       wordpress => /usr/share/wordpress
       ```
   
 * So after the creation of the link, the wordpress installation directory now has
   a link in it pointing back to itself:
 * `/usr/share/wordpress/wordpress => /usr/share/wordpress`
 * Making the link fixed the problem, but it feels a bit hacky, and I’d like to 
   understand what it is about my installation that caused me to have to create 
   it. Any insights would be appreciated.
 * This was on ubuntu 10.10

The topic ‘understanding initial configuration’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Installing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/installation/)
 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [flipside](https://wordpress.org/support/users/flipside/)
 * Last activity: [15 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/understanding-initial-configuration/)
 * Status: not resolved

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