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rpm -e --nodeps mysql-libs 
yum install MariaDB-server

The above command helped me to install mariadb, also installed Wordpress. This was a great help. My problem now is when I reboot the server or restart apache here is the error:

"Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress."

How can I solve this problem?

You need to install php-mysql so that PHP could connect to a MySQL/MariaDB instance. Do this by

yum install php-mysql

My solution was to reinstall php and php related packages.

yum remove php*
yum install epel-release

You must find the packages for your specific php version. In this example it's PHP 5.6

yum install php56w php56w-common

You may want as well to reinstall other packages depending on your requirements; listing a few here:

yum install php56w-mysqlnd php56w-pdo php56w-opcache php56w-mbstring php56w-gd php56w-dom php56w-pear php56w-soap

For example you can find a list of packages for PHP 5.6 here https://webtatic.com/packages/php56/#sapis
; or list available packages using yum list available 'php56w-*'

Restart your server: systemctl restart httpd.service

When I upgraded my website PHP from version 5.6 to 7.2, I encountered this problem “Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress”. It turns out that mysql extension is no longer supported in php version 7.2. It is now using mysqli extention. I am using old version of wordpress which still using mysql extension that is why the problem existed. So what I did is upgraded the wordpress to the core. This solve the problem.

Here's the steps I followed when upgrading wordpress manually.

1. First I created a full backup of my website http://fractioncalc.com. This is very important in case of mistake.


2. I download the newest WordPress ZIP file from wordpress.org.


3. I unzipped the file into a local directory of my computer.


4. I went to my website root directory and deleted wp-includes and wp-admin directories. I used sFTP connection using Filezilla software.


5. I uploaded the new wp-includes and wp-admin directories from the new version of WordPress I unzipped to my website root directory and replaced the directories I just deleted.


6. I did not delete the wp-content directory or any of the files in that directory. I just copied over the files from the wp-content directory in the new version of WordPress to my existing wp-contentdirectory. All existing files with the same name have been overwritten.


7. I copied all files from the root (/) directory of the new version of WordPress that I unzipped into my website root directory (or the root directory of your WordPress installation). Existing files has been overwritten and new files has been copied across. wp-config.php file was not be affected because WordPress has never distributed with a wp-config.php file.


8. I compare wp-config-sample.php which was distributed with WordPress but did not find anything to change so I just used the old one.


9. I cleared my browser cache to ensure I can see all changes.


10. I checked the site and there is no error now. Thanks God the upgrade was completed.