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How to Deploy WordPress website on AWS

HOW-TO GUIDE | Deploy WordPress with Amazon RDS and EC2

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Neel Soni
How to Deploy WordPress website on AWS

Day 45 of #90DaysOfDevOps

Overview

  • WordPress is a highly popular content management system (CMS) that is used for over 30% of all sites on the internet.

  • It is most commonly used for blogs but can also be used for running e-commerce sites, message boards, and many other popular use cases. In this guide, you will learn how to set up a WordPress site to run a blog.

Task

  • As WordPress requires a MySQL database to store its data, create an RDS as you did on Day 44.

  • To configure this WordPress site, you will create the following resources in AWS:

    • An Amazon EC2 instance to install and host the WordPress application.

    • An Amazon RDS for MySQL database to store your WordPress data.

    • Set up the server and post your new WordPress app.

Solution

To create the RDS MySQL database and connect it to EC2, refer to this blog 🔗.

I have already created a MySQL database and EC2 instance from my previous blog, hence this blog will continue with configuring the WordPress site.

Install Server

  • To begin with, connect to the EC2 instance with SSH and install an Apache server.

  • To install, start and enable the Apache server execute the command:

  • Ubuntu: sudo apt install apache2 -y && sudo systemctl start apache2 && sudo systemctl enable apache2

  • CentOS: sudo apt install httpd -y && sudo systemctl start httpd && sudo systemctl enable httpd

Download and configure WordPress

  • Download WordPress with the wget command and extract it.

    • sudo wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

    • tar -xzf latest.tar.gz

    • ls

  • Now, change the directory to wordpress and make a copy of the default config file.

    • cd wordpress

    • cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

  • Then, open the config file with vim/nano.

  • Modify the database name, username, password, and host according to the database you have created.

  • Scroll down and replace the following code with the code given on this website: https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/

/**#@+
 * Authentication Unique Keys and Salts.
 *
 * Change these to different unique phrases!
 * You can generate these using the {@link https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ WordPress.org secret-key service}
 * You can change these at any point in time to invalidate all existing cookies. This will force all users to have to log in again.
 *
 * @since 2.6.0
 */
define( 'AUTH_KEY',         'put your unique phrase here' );
define( 'SECURE_AUTH_KEY',  'put your unique phrase here' );
define( 'LOGGED_IN_KEY',    'put your unique phrase here' );
define( 'NONCE_KEY',        'put your unique phrase here' );
define( 'AUTH_SALT',        'put your unique phrase here' );
define( 'SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'put your unique phrase here' );
define( 'LOGGED_IN_SALT',   'put your unique phrase here' );
define( 'NONCE_SALT',       'put your unique phrase here' );

Configure database in Ubuntu

  • If you haven't installed the MySQL client then first, install the client to configure and create a database for WordPress. In your terminal, run the following command.

    • sudo apt install mysql-client-core-8.0 -y

  • Secondly, connect to the database:

    • mysql -h <endpoint> -P <port> -u <username> -p

  • Create database for wordpress and give the user permission to access the wordpress database:

    • CREATE DATABASE wordpress;

    • CREATE USER 'wordpress' IDENTIFIED BY 'wordpress-pass'; //wordpress-pass is password for user wordpress.

    • GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO wordpress;

    • FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

    • Exit

Deploy WordPress

  • First, install a few dependencies to run wordpress:

    • sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql -y

  • Second, change to the proper directory by running the following command:

    • cd /home/ubuntu

  • Then, copy your WordPress application files into the /var/www/html directory used by Apache.

    • sudo cp -r wordpress/* /var/www/html/

  • Finally, restart the Apache webserver to pick up the changes.

    • sudo service apache2 restart

  • Now enter the instance IP address in the browser and verify.

Thank you.

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