Today, almost every organization uses Cloud Computing for performing a wide range of operations, including end-to-end website hosting. Usually, when developers/organizations host their websites, they have to Build, Design, and Manage servers to take a website online. And often, they leverage third-party server management companies to manage the servers. Such processes lead to high site management costs and also lack productivity. To eliminate the complexities of creating and launching a website, developers today use cloud services to get started quickly. Such services not only decrease the cost of site administration and maintenance but also increase the scalability and agility of the website.
In this article, you will learn about WordPress, the advantages of launching WordPress on AWS, and different methods to set up AWS WordPress Installation. Read along to learn more about AWS WordPress Installation!
Table of Contents
Prerequisites
- Fundamental knowledge of Web Hosting.
What is WordPress?
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WordPress is a Content Management System that allows you to design, create, and alter the appearance of your website without any pre-required technical or coding knowledge. Since WordPress is available open-source, it provides enough flexibility to customize your websites based on your requirements.
WordPress also offers you a massive Ecosystem of Plugins and Themes, allowing you to add additional functionality to your site. By combining these two extensions, WordPress gives you complete control over your choice of customization to make your website look and function in the way you need. In addition, WordPress offers you an in-built search engine optimization tool that enables you to customize site elements like Permalink, Search Description, Meta Tag, Meta Description, Focus Keywords, etc.
What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon’s cloud service platform that offers users a suite of Cloud-computing services to build and deploy end-to-end applications in the cloud. Operating from different geographical regions worldwide, AWS has over 200 fully-featured services, including Analytics, Storage, Database, Application Services, Internet of Things, Security, and Deployment. AWS is also highly cost-effective since it eliminates the need for managing a large infrastructure to maintain databases and servers. Since AWS offers such comprehensive and secure cloud services, it is most prominent among developers and organizations for enhancing and promoting their business to the next level.
Need for Setting up AWS WordPress Installation
1) Highly Scalable
You can easily achieve high scalability even for heavy traffic websites. Since it’s highly scalable, you do not need to worry about the amount of traffic your servers receive. By such features, AWS ensures maximum Uptime, Performance, and Availability of your site.
2) More Control
Usually, creating and managing a website has been complex and expensive. It requires you to separately manage Web Servers, Database Servers, Load Balancers, Networking, etc. But with AWS, you can take total control of Servers, Storage, Databases, and Application services to independently design and host your website. For such reasons, many WordPress websites run using AWS.
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Hevo takes care of all your data pre-processing needs required to set up the integration and lets you focus on key business activities and draw a much powerful insight on how to generate more leads, retain customers, and take your business to new heights of profitability. It provides a consistent & reliable solution to manage data in real-time and always have analysis-ready data in your desired destination.
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How to Set up AWS WordPress Installation?
Two of the simplest methods that you can refer to for setting up AWS WordPress Installation are discussed below in detail:
Method 1: Install WordPress on AWS using Amazon Lightsail
- Sign in to your AWS account using the appropriate credentials to begin with the AWS WordPress Installation.
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- In the AWS Management Console, you can see the Find Services option. In that, search “Lightsail” and click Enter.
- Now, you will be redirected to the Amazon Lightsail Workspace.
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- Click on Create Instance on the welcome page of Amazon Lightsail.
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- You will be prompted to choose your AWS location and Availability Zone. AWS supports many regions worldwide where data transfer limits vary for each region. It will be more effective when choosing the AWS region according to your target audience.
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- Once you choose your region, you have to select your Instance Image.
- You can choose the Linux/Unix instance or Windows instance according to your preference. Next, you will be asked to select a blueprint.
- Many applications that Lightsail supports will be displayed, where you have to pick the WordPress option.
- On top of the displayed applications, select the Apps+OS option to get a server that comes with pre-installed WordPress.
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- Now, you have to select your instance plan.
- The pricing of the instance starts from 3.5 USD per month, which you can use if you are just beginning and expect low traffic. But as your site grows over time, you can upgrade to a higher plan.
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- Now, Enter a suitable name for the instance. The unique name can also include Periods, Dashes, and Underscores.
- After naming your instance, click on Create Instance, and your instance is ready.
- Now, connect your instance via SSH to get the password for accessing your WordPress site.
- The instance you created before stores the default password for signing in to the administration page of the WordPress site will be stored.
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- To get the password, click on the Instances tab on the Lightsail home page.
- Now, click on the SSH Quick Connect icon present in your WordPress instance.
- A browser-based SSH client window will pop up.
- Here, type the following command to retrieve your password.
cat $HOME/bitnami_application_password
- After the execution of the command, you will get a password. You can make a note or copy the password for future use.
- To sign in to the administration dashboard of your WordPress site, enter:
http://PublicIpAddress/wp-admin.com
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- Now, in the place of “PublicIpAddress,” type the IP address displayed on your WordPress instance created before.
- Log into your instance by giving a user name as “user” and password that you copied from the CLI window.
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- You are logged into your WordPress website’s administration dashboard. You can now change the password of your WordPress account instead of having the default password.
- Now, your WordPress site is up and running. By default, AWS will set a dynamic IP address for your instance. If your WordPress server is rebooted, you might end up with a different IP address. In other words, if you start or stop your instance, the default public IP of your instance will change. To solve this problem, you should set a static IP whose IP address is permanent.
- To create a static IP, go to the Instances tab on the Lightsail homepage and choose your running instance.
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- Now, click on the Networking tab and select Create Static IP.
- By default, the static IP location is pre-selected based on the location preference that you have provided before.
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- Now, choose the instance to attach with the static IP address.
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- Give a suitable unique name to your static IP address and click on Create. Now, your permanent IP address to access your WordPress is created.
- The next step is to create a Lightsail DNS zone to map a domain to your WordPress instance. This process sets a website name to your static IP address.
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- To create a Lightsail DNS zone, click on the Networking tab on the Lightsail home page and click on Create DNS zone.
- In the displayed tab, give your domain name and click on Create DNS zone.
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- Now, a list of “Nameservers” will be displayed. You can add these name server addresses to your domain name’s registrar for transferring your domain’s DNS records to Lightsail.
- For executing this process, click on Add Record in the DNS records and select “A record” from a list of available DNS records.
- In a Subdomain field, enter the “@” symbol to map the apex of your domain to your instance.
- In the Resolves to box, select the static IP address that you have previously created and attached to the WordPress instance, and then click on Save.
- Once changes are done, it takes some time to refresh the entries in the DNS Servers. After that, your WordPress website created using AWS LightSail is live and can be accessed with your domain name.
These are the steps to create your WordPress website using AWS Lightsail and setting up AWS WordPress Installation. However, there are other nuances that you have to fix, like routing it through HTTPS, adding Distribution and Load Balancer to ensure your website has all the necessary requisites for serving your customers better.
Method 2: Installing WordPress on AWS EC2 Instance
Another method for creating a WordPress website using AWS is installing WordPress manually on Amazon EC2 Instances. Follow the steps given below to set up AWS WordPress Installation using AWS EC2 Instance:
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- Go to your AWS Management Console and find EC2 under the Compute section. Click on EC2 to open the EC2 dashboard.
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- The next step is to install WordPress on your EC2 Instance. Go to Amazon AWS Marketplace on the left menu and search for “WordPress.” You will find the list of different versions of WordPress. Look for “WordPress Certified by Bitnami and Automatic” and click on the Select button.
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- Now, you will get the configuration details and hourly fees for different instances. Scroll to the bottom and click on Continue.
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- For this tutorial, select the free-tier eligible t2.micro instance. To proceed with this instance, click on the Next: Configure Instance Details button at the left bottom.
- Skip the Configure Instance step by leaving it with its default values. You can also skip the Add Storage step because the default storage of 8GB is enough to host WordPress.
- In the Add Tags step, you can enter a name for your instance. This name will later appear on your instance overview.
- In the next step, you will be prompted to configure a security group, a set of firewall rules that controls the traffic for your instance. Here, you can configure a Load Balancer, Database, and more.
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- After configuring the security group, review your configuration values and then click on Launch to create the instance. The new pop-up screen will appear asking to create a key-value pair. Select “Proceed without a key pair” and check the acknowledge box. Then, click on the Launch Instances button. Now, your WordPress instance is live.
- Click on View Instances on the bottom right to view the newly created WordPress instance.
- Now, copy the IP address of your instance and paste it into the address bar of your browser tab. You will see the default home screen of the newly created WordPress site.
However, now your website is only accessible using the IP address. You can further set a domain name to your AWS WordPress instance by connecting via domain name registrars.
Conclusion
In this article, you have learned how to install WordPress on AWS using Lightsail and EC2 instances. However, both methods for setting up AWS WordPress Installation have their own advantages that cannot be replaced by one another. But when you compare both in terms of simplicity and effectiveness, it’s easier to launch, manage and deploy websites using Lightsail than EC2 instances.
Lightsail also serves better since it makes server management easier by automatically configuring critical resources like networking and security. But, if you have a heavy load, you should prefer EC2 over Lightsail for better scalability. Integrating and analyzing your data from a diverse set of data sources such as WordPress can be challenging and this is where Hevo Data comes into the picture.
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Hevo Data provides its users with a simpler platform for integrating data from 100+ sources (including 40+ free sources) such as WordPress for Analysis. It is a No-code Data Pipeline that can help you combine data from multiple sources. You can use it to transfer data from multiple data sources into your Data Warehouse, Database, or a destination of your choice. It provides you with a consistent and reliable solution to managing data in real-time, ensuring that you always have Analysis-ready data in your desired destination.
Want to take Hevo for a spin? Sign Up for a 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite first hand. You can also have a look at our unbeatable pricing that will help you choose the right plan for your business needs!
Share your experience of setting up AWS WordPress Installation. Tell us in the comments below!