From the project
LAMP or WordPress? Start with the smaller answer
People often compare LAMP and WordPress as if they were two editions of the same server. They are not. One is a foundation. The other is a finished application built on roughly that foundation.
If the site you want is a WordPress site, install the WordPress appliance. You get WordPress, the web server, PHP, MariaDB and the TurnKey management tools in one image. The first boot asks for the important passwords and site details. After that you can log in and start publishing.
Choose LAMP when the thing you need to run is your code.
Pick WordPress for a WordPress job
The WordPress appliance makes sense for a company site, a publication, a club site or a shop built with a WordPress plugin. It also makes a handy private publishing server. The application is already installed and its database is already wired up.
That saves time, but it is not a promise that WordPress needs no maintenance. Themes and plugins are application code. Keep the ones you use updated and delete the ones you abandoned. Make a TKLBAM backup before a large plugin or theme change. If the update goes badly, restoring is usually less exciting than debugging PHP on a public server.
WordPress is also the better choice when somebody else will manage content. Its editor, media library and user roles are the point of the product. Starting with bare LAMP and installing WordPress by hand only recreates work the appliance already did.
Pick LAMP when you own the application
The LAMP appliance gives you Linux, Apache, MariaDB and PHP without choosing the application that sits on top. It is useful for an in-house PHP tool, a small API, an old PHP application that you need to keep alive, or a staging copy of a site under development.
It is deliberately less opinionated. Put your application under the web root, create the database it expects and apply its own deployment instructions. You decide its release process and its application-level security policy.
That freedom includes more responsibility. TurnKey can keep Debian security updates moving. It cannot know whether the PHP code you copied onto the server has an unsafe dependency or a debug endpoint exposed to the Internet.
A quick decision rule
Use WordPress if your answer to “what software runs the site?” is WordPress.
Use LAMP if the answer is a repository name, a vendor ZIP file or “the PHP system we maintain.”
If neither answer fits, check the appliance library before building from LAMP. There may already be an appliance for the application, with installation and first-boot setup taken care of.
Whichever route you take, test a restore before the server becomes important. A backup that has never been restored is still a theory.